...
Put -XS in the option box (note that it's case sensitive)
Did that, no change.
Probably I am wrong, but just in case.
Linking deals extensively with the HDD. If the drive started to take longer time for usual activities, then it is time to consider preparing a backup of your important data.
What's interesting is when it hangs on linking, the HD light isn't even flashing, so there's no disk activity to tip me off that anything is even happening, let alone disk malfunction. Looking at
top, lazarus is taking up more memory than usual, but not more than the usual suspects (chromium, thunderbird, etc).
I installed Sparky linux (debian testing based) and there is a serious problem while linking, is not Lazarus. It happens also compiling FreePascal and every project. Linking takes very long time (linking lazarus takes too much time).
All is pointing to Binutils 2.26. I don't know if this happen only in Debian Testing or also other Linux distros using Binutils 2.26 suffer this issue.
Interesting... apt-get updating now... Well, looky there, binutils is due for an update to 2.26-3; lets see what happens...
After last Debian testing upgrade: Binutils 2.26-2 to 2.26-3, linking is fast again so don't panic 
...
CONFIRMED, all linking stages took anywhere from 1 -30 seconds.
Debian 'Testing' Binutils changelog is here:
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/b/binutils/binutils_2.26-3_changeloglooks like ld got a bugfix, so that was probably the problem; thanks for everyone's help!
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