MariaDB - an alternative to MySQL

After Oracle bought Sun, I started wondering what would happen to our dear RDBMS called MySQL. So I started digging around and reading blogs about other developers that had the same concern as mine. And lo and behold I came across MariaDB.

MariaDB is a backward compatible, drop-in replacement of the MySQL® Database Server. It includes all major open source storage engines.

So what is really different about MariaDB? I needed to convince myself that I should change from MySQL to MariaDB. So I started reading about its features and I must say I like what I have read. So here are a few things I have found out:-

•  More Storage Engine
• Aria
• XtraDB (drop-in replacement for InnoDB)
• PBXT
• FederatedX (drop-in replacement for Federated)
• OQGRAPH
• SphinxSE
• Speed improvements
• Better Testing
• Fewer warnings and bugs

The idea is to make MariaDB a full drop in replacement for MySQL, which means:

• From the user standpoint, things should be the as before, except that there are some new commands and things should be faster and more reliable.
• Only that package name is different; All filenames, binaries, paths, ports, sockets etc should be the same.
• Client libraries are binary compatible.
• Data and table definition files (.frm) files are binary compatible.
• Command should work the same.

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Installation on Ubuntu (testsed on Ubuntu 10.04LTS) - Thanks to Phil Bayfield

Try it and give me some feed back.