Gow (Gnu On Windows) is the lightweight alternative to Cygwin. It uses a convenient Windows installer that installs about 130 extremely useful open source UNIX applications compiled as native win32 binaries. Developed by Brent Matzelle
License: Open Source
BusyBox is a lightweight, highly customizable toolkit that is ideal for embedded systems, offering a wide range of basic utilities but with limited advanced functionalities. In contrast, gow is more user-friendly, provides better extensibility, and is suited for building Go applications, but it has a larger binary size and less compatibility with traditional Unix commands.