If you have to distribute binary software (say your audience won't accept a from-scratch distribution because compilers are not marketed as readily available on your platform, or you're trying to make something bootable), compress the binaries with a tool that inserts a small program to decompress them at runtime. This tool is UPX (http://upx.tsx.org/) by Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar. UPX compresses Linux programs, real mode DOS programs (EXE and COM), 32-bit Watcom and DJGPP DOS programs, Win32 programs and DLLs, Atari ST TOS programs, and a couple other binary formats. It works wonders on bloated office suites, producing better compression than even zip/gzip.