Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
Howto for small Hello World:

* Install Free Pascal 2.0.2
* Start up the IDE.
* [pascal]program hello;
begin
writeln('Hello world');
end.[/pascal]
* Select options->mode->release.
* Compiler.
* I have a file that is 133 kb.
* Go to Dos prompt.
* 'strip hello.exe'
* A have a file that is 28 kb.
How to for Lazarus will follow later. Don't know yet if it will be Linux or Windows, but with the hand on my heart: there is no difference.
And you posted this because [...] ?

When you are developing an LCL application in Lazarus/FPC, the generated EXE (Win32) size is surprisingly big, especially if the application itself is rather simple (button + edit box). Of course, you enable smartlinking, strip all debug information and after all the effort, you get an application that is around 1 Megabyte big. Now am I making sense here?

Basically, with a lot of effort, you get an oversized application when compared to its Delphi counterpart. If you find a way to create smaller LCL applications - please post it. Just don't go again for Linux-based apps as you continuously do, since Delphi and any other Win32 executable won't run there, unless you use WINE, as Savage said.