In order to install Subversion on Ubuntu 8.10, you will need to perform this command:

sudo apt-get install subversion


The default version of the Subversion at the current moment that you will get installed is Subversion 1.5. You can check the version with this command:

svn --version


And it will display the following message:

svn, version 1.5.1 (r32289)
compiled Aug 7 2009, 01:15:13

Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using Neon.
- handles ‘http’ scheme
- handles ‘https’ scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
- with Cyrus SASL authentication
- handles ’svn’ scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
- handles ‘file’ scheme

However, if you wish to install the latest Subversion (1.6.5), there are few steps that need to be done:
1. Add the following lines in the sources.list which is located inside the /etc/apt directory.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu intrepid main


You can open the file with any editor or with the command:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list


2. In order to start installing and using software from a Personal Package Archive (PPA), you need to add the key signature so that you can tell Ubuntu where to find the PPA and how to verify the authenticity of its software.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 413576CB


3. Do an update to get the sources:

sudo apt-get update


4. Reinstall or upgrade the installed subversion

sudo apt-get --reinstall install subversion


5. Check the latest version with the command: svn –version

svn, version 1.6.5 (r38866)
compiled Sep 2 2009, 05:15:17

Copyright (C) 2000-2009 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using Neon.
- handles ‘http’ scheme
- handles ‘https’ scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
- with Cyrus SASL authentication
- handles ’svn’ scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
- handles ‘file’ scheme

As specified in the launchpad page that discussed about installing Subversion in different Ubuntu version, you need to choose the correct source list entries that suitable for your Ubuntu version else you will encounter broken packages error as bellow (which I had configured with Jaunty that should be work for Ubuntu 9.0.4 and not Ubuntu 8.10):

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
subversion: Depends: libsvn1 (= 1.6.5dfsg-1ubuntu1~jaunty1~andersk1) but 1.5.1dfsg1-1ubuntu2.1 is to be installed
Depends: libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.6.10) but 3.5.9-3ubuntu1 is to be installed
E: Broken packages

References:

• Subversion 1.6.5 on Ubuntu 9.0.4
• Subversion 1.6 packages for Ubuntu