Source control was simply painful before git. I remember desperately trying to get Subversion to compile and work way back in the days, because even though it was barely limping along it still looked like a way out of the hell that is proprietary, corporate source control.

I then went on to use subversion for a long time in different settings. Up until the day I finally tried git. This is not about centralized vs. distributed, it's simply superior software, period. Nothing else I've tried even comes close.