[cesarb]

> Each applet uses the same amount of disk space (0 blocks, i.e. the content fits into inode).

Is that really the case? AFAIK, OpenWRT uses SquashFS by default, and a quick web search tells me that "[...] In addition, inode and directory data are highly compacted, and packed on byte boundaries. Each compressed inode is on average 8 bytes in length [...]" (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/squashfs....). That is, even if the content fits into the inode, it will make the inode use more space (they're variable-size, unlike on traditional filesystems with fixed-size inodes).

And using hardlinks (traditionally, we use hardlinks with busybox, not symlinks) goes even further: all commands use a single inode, the only extra space needed is for the directory entry (which you need anyway).