I'm pretty sure that for the classic "Hello World" example that's not the case, because we can simply use the linux write system call. For example, an assembly

I'm pretty sure that for the classic "Hello World" example that's not the case, because we can simply use the linux write system call. For example, an assembly program that just calls write and then exits is much smaller than even an unlinked version of it that uses printf, because the ELF binary doesn't need to contain information for the linker.