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Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

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Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#21

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

If you want to selfhost and use docker for Java edition, this is the easiest way:

https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server

There’s also a version for bedrock (the version that’s supported on mobile devices).

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#22
post #18
post #3

osu (the rhythm game) also recently switched to SDL3, from SDL2, and it came with significant performance/latency improvements. SDL3 adoption is a bit slow it seems. Though, I'm surprised Minecraft used GLFW all this time. One notable thing is that switching to SDL3 eliminated lag from having Discord client open while playing osu. Pretty sure this was from their devlog on YouTube.

On Linux, often times you will be using SDL3 regardless, as sdl2-compat and sdl12-compat are the default implementations of SDL2 and 1.2 on some distros. This has a lot of benefits, from more apps working natively on Wayland (which gives lower latency than XWayland) to better controller support. Not sure what this meant for osu but I wouldn't be surprised if it made the actual switch less impactful for some users. I…

Don't most games ship their own build of SDL?

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#23

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

I used a Docker image. Good enough as is for LAN usage. I assume it could be exposed online with a Cloudflare tunnel but I wouldnt trust it to not be hacked. Docker may also make it harder to customize (install mods).

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#24
post #20

Is the rationale for switching away from GLFW documented anywhere? I'd love to read about it, I have some projects which use GLFW myself and I'm always wondering whether or not SDL would be better

SDL is more of a "platform" you can use anywhere. It includes literally everything you'd want from the OS layer (windowing, graphics, audio, input, network code, threads) whereas GLFW is just windowing, graphics context and input, you need to bring your own audio, network code and threading library. Not a big deal for some but SDL does do more... Plus it's even more portable than GLFW.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#25
post #20

Is the rationale for switching away from GLFW documented anywhere? I'd love to read about it, I have some projects which use GLFW myself and I'm always wondering whether or not SDL would be better

SDL is more of a "platform" you can use anywhere. It includes literally everything you'd want from the OS layer (windowing, graphics, audio, input, network code, threads) whereas GLFW is just windowing, graphics context and input, you need to bring your own audio, network code and threading library. Not a big deal for some but SDL does do more... Plus it's even more portable than GLFW.

I'm aware of those things, but are those the reasons? Are they actually planning on moving away from their existing audio, networking and threading solutions and switch it out for SDL's implementations? Are they planning on porting Minecraft Java to platforms GLFW doesn't support?

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#26

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

Are all of your family playing on Bedrock edition? There is a version split between console editions (plus some Windows users) and the original Java edition, with most of the (verbal?) online community playing on the latter.

If you are not all playing on the same edition, you can use something called GeyserMC (https://geysermc.org/) to allow Bedrock players to join your Java server.

Modding your server can greatly improve your server performance. Java is the platform with the best modding support. The modding APIs are however community built, due to historical and upsteram reasons. The subjectively best API for development (in my opinion) is Fabric (https://fabricmc.net/), but many older mods have only targetted Forge. Due to a split in the Forge development team, this API was recently superceded by NeoForge (https://neoforged.net/). Most relevant mods support both Fabric and NeoForge.

To explore mods, I would recommend using Modrinth. It has a pleasant and powerful interface, and links to source code on open source mods.

https://modrinth.com/

Here is a search filter for an overview of server-side optimisation mods:

https://modrinth.com/discover/mods?g=categories:fabric&l=ope...

To set up your Minecraft server, I would recommend NixOS (https://nixos.org) for devops with nix-minecraft for server configuration:

https://github.com/Infinidoge/nix-minecraft

Feel free to ask clarifying questions if you have any, I might have written this somewhat compactly!

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#27

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

Minecraft servers are resource hogs even when idle. Enable the built-in idle server shutdown (IDLE_SERVER=true). It automatically stops the server after a few minutes with no players and starts it again when needed. It's not enabled by default.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#28

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

Minecraft comes in two flavors, Java and Bedrock. All of the mobile, console ports, and windows store versions are based on bedrock. Java is the one you download directly from the website. Bedrock isn't really about custom hosted servers, but there is a way.

You can run a standard Java Minecraft server however you like, and then you can wrap it to also work with the Bedrock using Gyser[1] which will protocol translate it on the fly. It can require some workarounds on the more restrictive bedrock clients but it does work. That will let you setup and control the server from Java which has more options available.

[1] https://geysermc.org/

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#29

Anyone got any advice for a techy dad with no (zero) Minecraft experience who wants to set up a Minecraft server for the family in 2026? Kids right now are playing on their iPads, and (sometimes) old macbooks/windows PCs.

I just run the server off of the fastest laptop and one of them also uses that machine to play and lock it all down with tailscale. Honestly probably not worth the effort when the java edition allows them to play together over the wifi network out of the box. Have not found a solution I like to open up to other kids at school.

Re: Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

#30
post #20

Is the rationale for switching away from GLFW documented anywhere? I'd love to read about it, I have some projects which use GLFW myself and I'm always wondering whether or not SDL would be better

You could make an entire 2D game using the SDL API without OpenGL/vulkan.
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