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Ask HN: Why do people still use MySQL over MariaDB?

8 points by occam65 ↗ HN
As far as I've come to understand it, MariaDB is a fork of MySQL from the original author, is better maintained, and faster. To take it even further, it practically works as a drop-in replacement of MySQL. Why do developers continue to start new projects using MySQL, and why aren't they busy migrating existing projects to Maria?

Is there a drawback to Maria that I'm not aware of?

12 comments

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eudoxus
From what I can tell it just takes sometime for awareness and adoption to occur. This is especially the case for people coming from the long trusted MySQL. Basically it's not so much that there is something wrong with Maria, just attachment to the firmiliar.

Just my 2¢

unclebucknasty
I think it also comes down to the fact that many hosting providers (including cloud providers like AWS) offer up MySQL-imaged machines, with back-up and other processes around that.

So, on the dev front, I'm going to be inclined to stick with MySQL on my local dev machine, knowing that I'm also deploying to MySQL in production. Even if MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement, there can be differences between the two that impact how code runs. This is especially true when one (MariaDB) is updated more frequently.

I'm sure I can roll my own MariaDB server on an EC2 machine vs going with RDS, then also migrate my dev machine to MariaDB as well. But, I've just not seen a compelling reason to undertake that effort as of yet.

b_chicago
It seems like the Wikimedia article has turned more people on to MariaDB - but what about Percona? I'm ignorant about the differences. Does anyone have a good 3-way comparison?
jacob019
I tried MariaDB a couple years ago, started having some terrible problems where the server would hang and require a restart after which I had corruption. MySQL 5.5 has been rock solid.
snowwrestler
The drawback to MariaDB is that it is an unknown. If someone has experienced success with MySQL, then they know they can succeed in the future with MySQL. It's one less thing to worry about.

To consider trying something new, they would need to expect a big improvement. That's not really what MariaDB promises.

johnny22
many distributions are switching to mariadb by default in the current or next versions. Fedora, Arch, and OpenSUSE for example.
execat
People don't know any better.

Even today I have people asking me 'how to install OpenOffice on Fedora'. They complain how the yum commands they found on a 5 year old guide do not work anymore. Then they go and search for an OpenOffice RPM, which they do find, and then complain how bad Linux system is.

Granted that office suites are generally end-user whereas databases are developers, I can't see my college's system admin installing MariaDB the same way I can't see my college teaching MongoDB.

stevekemp
Familiarity, and the fact that it isn't packaged for all distributions. (For example Debian have no packages.)

Sure it is probably "better", but running Debian's stable release the only updates I wish to apply are security fixes from the security team.

LarryMade2
Hmm on my development machine MySQL is already there, when Maria DB becomes an option I'll switch. Probably same with my Hosting.

If they are technically the same, the cost for me currently is the same ($0), and the experience is the same, there is not immediate justification. Now when Maria adds some nifty new feature (schema-less data storage, intelligent joined results, or some other cool, thing that takes the bite out of massive SQL queries) then it becomes compelling because it isn't same-old/same-old.

I'm sure the same goes for a lot of others; additionally I am comforted that Maria exists and is being developed, and if my situation changes that will be the direction I go.