Okay, I did what you said, and here's everything (using "copy all/original messages to clipboard") from the message window.
Hint: (11030) Start of reading config file /home/fred/.fpc.cfg
Hint: (11031) End of reading config file /home/fred/.fpc.cfg
Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.4 [2014/04/20] for x86_64
Copyright (c) 1993-2014 by Florian Klaempfl and others
(1002) Target OS: Linux for x86-64
(3104) Compiling /home/fred/tmp/project1.lpr
Fatal: (10022) Can't find unit gettext used by LazUTF8
Fatal: (1018) Compilation aborted
Error: /usr/bin/ppcx64 returned an error exitcode (normal if you did not specify a source file to be compiled)
Does this help? I'm at my wit's end (a short trip, I admit). I've tried uninstalling everything several times. I've tried installing the older version in Synaptic. That one won't even pretend to work. Then I got rid of that and put back version 2.6.4 which this is. It works fine -- until I try to compile. I can't begin to imagine what is going on here. Is there some other set of code/method of installation I can try? I really have no idea what to do now. I had Lazarus working once, and it worked fine until something broke, and now I can't even try to compile my partly finished program any more. It it looks like all the work I did was for nothing.
Any ideas from anyone would REALLY be appreciated. How can I get this damn thing to run? If it helps, I'm using Mint Rafaela.