Re: Ediff error -- Permission denied (Win8)

[Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Friday, August 2, 2013 5:09:16 AM UTC+5:30, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I wish I had Unix running on my machine!
> 
> Do you need help with that?

Since this seems to be such a FAQ, attempting to say something.  Hopefully more windows-aware folks will amend.

Many people using windows find need for unix-ish facilities/features/feel.

Setting up native windows emacs is a first (but not last!) step.
cygwin is considered a full-featured but somewhat heavyweight answer to this need
mingw is a somewhat lighter solution.

Some comparison here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/771756/what-is-the-difference-between-cygwin-and-mingw

You can also set up diff/grep etc alone.
[I believe Eli has posted the link a few days back...]

Other solutions:
Win+Linux side-by-side: Make your system multibootable with grub.
This is an old solution. In my most recent bundled-with-win-8 laptop, copying files from ubuntu and windows is not working as it used to.  Seems to be a uefi/gpt problem.

Windows-inside-linux: wubi can be installed as a normal windows program inside windows and was quite popular but again seems to be suffering gpt/uefi related problems.

Linux-in-VM-in-windows: I know some friends who swear by VMware. No experience myself.

Wine: windows emulator inside linux. Will run many (not all!) windows programs on a vanilla gnu/linux