For some reason I assumed the SDL2 source included that.
I installed those libraries and successfully compiled Starfighter. After running it I get odd warnings in the terminal, such as: nvfx_screen_get_param:95 - Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 30A window titled Starfighter appears, but it is completely black except for the top title bar. I know that my laptop has poor OpenGL support with the free drivers, but I wasn't aware of any SDL issues.