I'm looking to set up a revision control system with me as a single user. I'd like to have access (read and write) protected using SSL, little overhead, and preferrably a simple setup. I'm looking to do this on my own server, so I don't want to use the option of registering with some professional provider of such a service (I like having direct control over my data; also, I'd like to know how to set up something like that).

As far as I'm aware, what kind of project I want to subject to revision control doesn't really matter, but just for completeness' sake, I'm planning on using this for Java project, some html/css/php stuff, and in the future possibly as a synchronizing tool for small data bases (ignore that later one if it doesn't fit in with the paradigm of revision control).

My questions primarily arise from the fact that I only ever used Subversion from Eclipse, so I don't have thorough knowledge of what's out there, what fits better for which needs, etc. So far I've heard of Subversion, Git, Mercurial, but I'm open to any system that's widely used and well supported. My server is running Ubuntu 11.10.

Which system should I choose, what are the advantages of the respective systems, and if you know of any particularly useful ones, are there tutorials regarding the setup of the system I should choose that you could recommend?