

Arch Linux: MariaDB replaces MySQL in repositories - mcrittenden
https://www.archlinux.org/news/mariadb-replaces-mysql-in-repositories/
https://www.archlinux.org/news/mariadb-replaces-mysql-in-repositories/
======
shared4you
What a coincidence! Just _today_ , Slackware also switched to MariaDB! [1].
Two weeks ago, it was openSUSE [2]. It's on the cards for the next Fedora
release in May [3]. Wonder when will Debian (and its children) make the
switch.

[1]: [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Slackware-Linux-
switc...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Slackware-Linux-switches-to-
MariaDB-1829261.html)

[2]: [http://blog.mariadb.org/opensuse-12-3-released-with-
mariadb-...](http://blog.mariadb.org/opensuse-12-3-released-with-mariadb-as-
default/)

[3]: [http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Fedora-19-MariaDB-
ins...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Fedora-19-MariaDB-instead-of-
MySQL-but-no-Btrfs-1795146.html)

~~~
Corrado
I would think that Debian would be especially sensitive to the Closed Source
environment that Oracle is generating for MySQL. It seems like it would be an
easy choice between two software stacks; one OSS and the other CSS. Granted,
Stable probably won't move for at least a release cycle, but I would be
disappointed if Sid didn't make the switch soon.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, doesn't have the same strong OSS sensibilities and
will probably tow the Oracle line, at least for a little while longer.

~~~
jcastro
> Ubuntu, on the other hand, doesn't have the same strong OSS sensibilities
> and will probably tow the Oracle line, at least for a little while longer.

Sorry to ruin your "Ubuntu is more closed" claim (seriously why even make that
up?) but Ubuntu has been discussing switching to MariaDB at for the past year
-- here are the last 2 blueprints with the progress:

\-
[https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-q-...](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-
q-mysql-roundtable) \-
[https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-r-...](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-
r-mysql)

Also it's "toe the line", and we're toeing with Debian, it just happens to be
the same person doing the work in Ubuntu and Debian, so doing the work in
Debian and syncing to Ubuntu makes the most sense.

------
mindstab
It's a pretty tricky business buying an open source company. You have to work
with the community and existing people to maintain "master" of it. Oracle of
course is not that company and so their subacquisition of mysql via Sun is now
being pissed away in its entirety. If I were an investor I might have some
questions.

*Edit: Sun dropped $1 billion on mysql. That's a lot of money to later just "lose"

~~~
arkitaip
I think it was a very deliberate strategy by Oracle to undermine open source
RDBMs by extinguishing the number one solution if it failed to attract
customers to Oracle db. Their major mistake seems to be that they
underestimated just how skeptical the foss community is of them - and rightly
so - and how fast it can re-group and create alternatives. But you know what I
really like? The fact that virtually no startups these days talk Oracle when
discussing big data, which used to be the domain that Oracle truly dominated.
Seriously, when did you read about Oracle (db) here on HN? It's interesting
that Oracle focused so much on fighting open source RDBMs when NoSQL databases
were the real threat all along.

~~~
FooBarWidget
Is the fact that almost no startups talk about or use Oracle that much of a
problem for Oracle? Those startups wouldn't have generated much revenue for
Oracle anyway. Those startups will forever be in search for a free solution.

~~~
ams6110
Startups targeting enterprise or government customers might well use Oracle.
It's free* to develop on, and something a lot of those sorts of clients use
anyway.

* Last I checked, Oracle allowed you to use Oracle RDBMS free for "prototype development" but once you were actually generating revenue from that you are supposed to buy the necessary licenses, even for continued development or support purposes.

~~~
ghshephard
It's still the case - we had a free license from Oracle for the first 3-4
years of our company's life - We just had an account manager call us ever 6-9
months, see how we were doing. Eventually we got some real customers,
revenues, and negotiated a several million dollar license purchase + 18%/year
maintenance.

------
eksith
Looking at the specs for MariaDB, I can see why our last client dropped MySQL
for the front end and went with it.

The XtraDB engine, basically a fork of InnoDB with patches, is actually very
nice. We've had to do almost no modifications to the data structure when
moving from InnoDB for some DBs (that we're not using Postgres for).

Fun fact: XtraDB is also the default in Percona <http://www.percona.com> (No,
I don't work for them).

There are things you still need to carefully look into before migration if
that's what you want to do. Minor things like naming is only part of it. Read.
Read. Re-read the documentation : <https://mariadb.org/docs>

I've felt MairaDB is the direction MySQL should have gone after the 4.x
branch. In many ways (though the technical aspects are totally different),
this split is very similar to what happened with FreeBSD after the 4.x branch
with the start of DragonFly. When in doubt, fork.

The beauty of Open Source.

~~~
olalonde
Out of curiosity, why do you need to use both Postgres and MySQL/MariaDB?

~~~
harichinnan
Mysql cannot do parallel query. That's a single query won't spin off multiple
threads and work in parallel. This makes it a bad solution for say aggregating
over large data. Mysql can handle lots of threads(queries) in parallel making
it an ideal solution for web.

Postgres can do parallel query.

~~~
EwanToo
MySQL can do parallel querying through some of the less common back-ends, like
Infinidb, which are more suited to warehousing than OLTP like InnoDB/XtraDB.

<http://infinidb.org/component/content/article/53/158>

------
antihero
That said, if you can, use PostgreSQL for the good of your head. Transactional
schema migrations mean you can save yourself a lot of headache.

~~~
dcolgan
Is there a good reason to use MySQL when you have the choice between it and
Postgres? When we had the MySQL vs Postgres discussion in college, it seemed
like the only reason to use MySQL we could come up with was that it had the
larger user base.

~~~
spudlyo
Traditionally MySQL has been ahead of Postgres in terms of replication, but
Postgres has made great strides in that department recently. Having said that,
Postgres still doesn't support master-master or ring topologies, replication
filtering, and is binary only (which is probably a good thing).

~~~
fdr
Naah, I wouldn't go so far to say it's a _good_ thing that it's missing, but
it's hellaciously hard to implement well. I think the sentiment is rendered
well in this mail, which took place after extensive review and hacking. In it,
Robert Haas (a committer) writes to Andres Freund (the principal author, I
believe):

    
    
      Before getting bogged down in technical commentary, let me say this
      very clearly: I am enormously grateful for your work on this
      project.  Logical replication based on WAL decoding is a feature of
      enormous value that PostgreSQL has needed for a long time, and your
      work has made that look like an achievable goal.  Furthermore, it
      seems to me that you have pursued the community process with all the
      vigor and sincerity for which anyone could ask.  Serious design
      concerns were raised early in the process and you made radical
      changes to the design which I believe have improved it tremendously,
      and you've continued to display an outstanding attitude at every
      phase of this process about which I can't say enough good things.
      There is no question in my mind that this work is going to be the
      beginning of a process that revolutionizes the way people think
      about replication and PostgreSQL, and you deserve our sincere thanks
      for that.
     
      Now, the bad news is, I don't think it's very reasonable to try to
      commit this to 9.3.  I think it is just too much stuff too late in
      the cycle.  I've reviewed some of the patches from time to time but
      there is a lot more stuff and it's big and complicated and it's not
      really clear that we have the interface quite right yet, even though
      I think it's also clear that we are a lot of closer than we were.  I
      don't want to be fixing that during beta, much less after release.
    

[http://www.postgresql.org/message-
id/CA+TgmoYhkMpkB8JZYhVei-...](http://www.postgresql.org/message-
id/CA+TgmoYhkMpkB8JZYhVei--h-onT-kT-Ko8bHvrrBUsewi_u-Q@mail.gmail.com)

The implications for PostgreSQL version upgrade alone are enormous. MySQL has
been ahead here, even though some if it was at the cost of some sanity, and by
lack of sanity I mean "statement based replication". The first semi-sane
logical replication was the 2008 release that included row-based-replication.

------
niggler
My favorite comment from the comparison page

<https://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-vs-mysql-compatibility/>

"Timings may be different as MariaDB is in many cases faster than MySQL. "

~~~
signed0
Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zMNULrz...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zMNULrzBDREJ:https://kb.askmonty.org/v/mariadb-
versus-mysql-compatibility/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
eli
I'm hardly a DB expert, but I would have thought Percona would make more sense
to replace Oracle MySQL in the repository. True it doesn't have a few new
bells, but it should be a drop-in replacement for pretty much everyone.

------
mcrittenden
For any arch'ers looking to upgrade, note that "mysql_upgrade -p" can take a
long time depending on how much data you have in MySQL. It took a few minutes
on my laptop with only a few medium sized databases.

------
fjordan
Interesting performance comparison here between MariaDB, Percona Server, and
MySQL <http://vbtechsupport.com/657/2/>

------
acomjean
I went to Open Database camp a few weeks ago. There was a talk about the
split...

The short story: MariaDB is a fork of MySQL done by Michael "Monty" Widenius
one of the mySQL founders.

It seems the winds of fear are blowing against mySQL and MariaDB is getting
mindshare (it is a fork so pretty close still but not going back). Although
Oracle hasn't really done anything yet, and did send a rep to the conference,
there seems to be some distrust.

About a decade ago at a startup we had and Oracle instance running s a test,
their sales people where tenacious (fought them off by asking for an ODBC
driver for linux). Then startup went under. sigh.

~~~
arkitaip
My prediction is that in the next few years Oracle will give up on MySQL by
either abandoning it or give it to the foss community. Because once the
enthusiasts, devs and hackers lose faith in your foss project - it's done for.
Just look at what happened to Open Office.

~~~
cincinnatus
But first they'll try to sue a bunch of people.

------
xxdesmus
Hopefully Ubuntu makes a similar switch in the near future. Long overdue at
this point.

~~~
monsterix
Totally agree. I have been feeling this gut for nearly everything open-source
out there. It's time to reign-back-in! Sorely.

------
HarrisonFisk
The interesting part about this is that MariaDB is only a drop in replacement
for MySQL 5.5. MariaDB isn't porting to MySQL 5.6 (which came out last month),
instead they are going to try to reimplement all of the functionality from
MySQL 5.6 which will probably never finish:

<http://blog.mariadb.org/mariadb-10-0-and-mysql-5-6/>

------
koenigdavidmj
Slackware is doing this too.

~~~
stock_toaster
Apparently Fedora and SuSe also decided to a while ago.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147574>

------
Uchikoma
How easy is it to switch a production environment (millions of users, TBs of
data) from MySQL to MariaDB?

------
chiph
Is MariaDB Galeria Cluster mostly-the-same as MySQL Cluster?

------
saintx
The queen is dead. Long live the queen.

