I can also recommend Cygwin, and I really don’t understand why so many people seem to have either completely overlooked it, or outright dislike it. It’s so much better than having to keep a full blown WSL “VM”/container just to get access to basic tools.
It's been a long time since I've used it, but I seem to recall Cygwin having a lot of minor but annoying "gotchas" with things like package management, file paths, etc. that you don't have to deal with in a more complete environment like WSL.
The fact that software needs to be specifically compiled for Cygwin is a big enough hassle on its own that I'd rather just use a "real" Linux environment and not have to deal with it.
I tried to use Cygwin a handful of times, but having to stop, close, and re-run the installer every time I forgot some package was overbearing. WSL was much easier to get running (it's a part of Windows!), and since it's a real ubuntu/debian/etc. installation, it behaves like one, too. Far and away much better UX with WSL.
I want to try out Liferea (RSS Reader) for my Windows. Let say it been a pain trying to get it to compile in Cygwin. I reinstalled Cygwin 4 times because I keep missing the dependencies that Liferea needs. I haven't start again because I'm worried that I have to go through this again. That's what happened today. I want to install a full package but people warned not to do it since it will balloon the size.
I think WSL1 sound like it's better than cygwin because it's native and made by MS. I also preferred babun and cmder for occasional scripting/dev needs (the Windows machine is only for entertainment to me), but WSL has an upper hand for easier integration with VSCode, Docker and other tools
I have a happy setup of Cygwin + Bash script invoking find/mv and a Windows Scheduler cron job to run it every 5 minutes. But to be honest, FreeFileSync is my first choice, but it was not viable for my use-case (moving files in Dropbox without downloading them, FFS and rsync do copy/delete).
