SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
More info
- Creator
- Sam Lantinga
- Released
- 1998
- Type
- C library
- License
- zlib
- Website
- libsdl.org
A thin C library that gives games one interface to windows, keyboards, gamepads, audio and graphics across every major platform.
Sam Lantinga wrote SDL in 1998 while at Loki Software, a company porting Windows games to Linux that got tired of rewriting the platform layer for every title. It is not a game engine: it opens a window, delivers input events, plays sound and hands you a surface to draw on — or a context for OpenGL and Vulkan. Everything else is your problem.
That modesty is exactly why it ended up everywhere. Emulators, source ports of old games, Pygame and a large share of Steam's Linux catalogue sit on top of it. Lantinga later joined Valve, which now sponsors the work. SDL 2.0 (2013) moved from the LGPL to the permissive zlib license; SDL3 went stable in 2025.