In many cases, you won't have to go out and get CVS, because it will already be on your system. If you run one of the major Linux or FreeBSD distributions, it's probably already installed in /usr/bin or some other likely location. If not, Red Hat Linux users can usually find an RPM (Red Hat Package) for the latest, or nearly latest, version of CVS in their distributions. And Debian users can install the latest Debian package with these commands:
floss$ apt-get update
floss$ apt-get install cvs
If CVS isn't already on your machine, you'll probably have to build it from source. If you're a non-Unix user, you'll probably find it easier to get a prebuilt binary for your operating system (more on that later). Fortunately, CVS is fully autoconfiscated – that is, it uses the GNU autoconfiguration mechanism, making compilation from source surprisingly easy.