ok to use trunk on The svn repos?

Hi folks,

is it ok to use a subversion client compiled from current trunk to merge and
commit stuff to trunk on The Subversion Repository? Or is it necessary to
stick to a stable release. My current environment offers svn 1.5.1, but it
seems to be awfully slow on a merge. Since I saw lots of posts that this has
been solved in at least some places, I'd like to try using trunk when
merging. Hey, what release is running on the server side? It strikes me now
that I don't even know.

Thanks for any remarks.
~Neels