Thanks for the your steps here! It really helped me out. I think what solved my problem on Ubuntu 17.10 was running the commands you had for installing the libraries. After running the following:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0 libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-pygame python-opengl python-gst0.10 python-enchant gstreamer0.10-plugins-good python-dev build-essential libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev python-pip libgstreamer1.0-dev
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-pygame python-opengl python-enchant python-dev build-essential libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev python-pip libgstreamer1.0-dev
I had to re-run the Ground Control linux requirements.
pip install -r requirements_linux.txt
kivy finally installed correctly with no complaints.
Then I was finally able to run Ground Control! Yay!