I'd recommend the new Gloss library as an easy way to get good results.
Gloss hides the pain of drawing simple
vector graphics behind a nice data
type and a few display functions.
Gloss uses OpenGL and GLUT under the
hood, but you won't have to worry
about any of that. Get something cool
on the screen in under 10 minutes.
There are also nice examples, such as:
and a nice example building flocking simulators
Alternatively, if it is vectors and text you want to manipulate, the diagrams package on top of cairo can yield very good results.
