
The Debian-based
Ubuntu Linux was unveiled today and a preview release is available for download. Ubuntu uses Gnome 2.8, kernel 2.6.8.1, OOo 1.1.2 and comes with a text-based, but dead-easy, installation procedure. Ubuntu has disabled the root user (sudo is used, same way as OSX does it) and it endorses the "less is more" philosophy. There are still bugs on the preview release, but the team welcomes feedback via their
mailing list. Read more for an interview with team member Jeff Waugh (also of Debian and Gnome fame). Screenshots also included, and more
are here to be found.
Your example just shows how horrible C and the Win32 API are, since all that code is just interfacing with Win32 C libraries. A Smalltalk class (like a C++ class) would hide all of that for you, and a "hello world" program in Smalltalk is just:
Transcript show: 'Hello, world!'
Not that it proves anything.