Adding to what User137 said, I can definitely say there is a massive difference to fpc on win32, win64 and linux. Don't know about mac, but if the code for fpc on each of these platforms is the same, then I would definitely rate linux as the better platform in terms of performance and stability but not necessarily ease of use (cryptic error messages sometimes). In terms of performance though, I get an extra 10-25 frames/sec on demo programs than I used to on NT systems, and a lot let crashes; which are a lot easier to solve since it isn't Runtime error 9000 at $123321...

Shame Programmer's Notepad refuse to play nice with wine.