For portability, well, SDL runs on Linux, Win32, MacOS, BeOS and other platforms including also the PS2 !!
Huh, what do you want on top of that ?

About simplicity, SDL is very good, even though I think I''ve not used Allegro enough to compare.

About GUI, I use Qt which is by far a more powerful GUI library (and which is crossplatform).

What SDL lacks in its own system, it makes up for with additional libraries -- like GUI''s, sprites, network connections, true-type fonts, etc.

SDL also runs on Solaris and IRIX. It has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, Eiffel, ML, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

I''ve never used Allegro, so I don''t know how it compares, but SDL is very, very good. As barebones or feature-rich as you need, really.

Is there anyone that has compared the speed of blitting in SDL vs Allegro? Currently im coding a space game, using Allegro with the Fblend Addon (for faster alpha blended blits).

But on my comp (500mhz with 32mb gfx) the gameoutput usually don´t get faster than 90-120 FPS. I don´t know is allegro´s blits is slower than SDL?
Anyone that are familiar with both and can make a test?
I´m just wondering if learning and implementing SDL is wort the effort.

By the way here is a snap from the space game x

hey, those TF''s graphics look very nice

sorry I don''t know any good benchmark.
In fact, I don''t know if you really can benchmark both since, as always, the benchmark depends on what you want to do.

It''s like comparing hardware accelerated graphics by comparing the number of Gtexels per second, or the number of triangles per second, or the fillrate or whatever : you only get the comparison for one thing at a time, so you can''t compare the overall unless one graphics card have Gtexels/s superior AND tri/s superior AND filrate superior to another card.