BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It was created in 1995 by Bruce Perens with the intention of putting a complete bootable system on a single floppy disk that would serve both as a rescue disk and as an installer for the Debian distribution. BusyBox is specifically designed for embedded operating systems with very limited resources, and it is optimized for space-constrained environments. BusyBox is a collection of core Unix utilities packaged as a single binary, which makes it ideal for resource-constrained environments such as embedded devices. BusyBox provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. BusyBox is open-source and licensed under the GPL.

Some key features of BusyBox include:

• Single Binary: BusyBox is a single binary, which is a conglomerate of many applications, each of which can be accessed by calling the single BusyBox binary with various names in a specific manner with appropriate arguments.

• Minimalism: BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time.

• Commands: BusyBox provides a stripped-down implementation of around 400 common UNIX/Linux commands. BusyBox implementation removes the uncommon, rarely used command options.

BusyBox is used in minimal operating systems such as Alpine as well as specialized scenarios like embedded devices and mobile shells. BusyBox is getting popular these days, especially among Docker users. BusyBox is also used in the cloud computing world as a foundation for minimal Linux container images. BusyBox can be installed using your distributions package manager like Apt or DNF or Yum.