I have been using virtualmin on Ubuntu 18.04 for years. Today I bought a new VPS with ubuntu 20.04 installed. During the post-installation wizard I was asked
I know very little about database, brief search indicate that MariaDB is a fork of Mysql, which probably means I can use it the same way as I use Mysql for my websites before. But I still feel a little uneasy about this, I am planning to move some old sites to this new server, would some of them get broken because the programming is not campatible with MariaDB?
Does Virtualmin support Mysql no more? Is there anyway to roll back using good and old Mysql?
We’ve discussed this topic at great length here in the forum.
Short answer: Virtualmin still supports MySQL, but we default to MariaDB, because the community at large has mostly decided that’s the better choice. Because the community has moved toward MariaDB, we believe you’ll find apps work better in MariaDB, and you’ll find you’re more likely to get support for any problems you have.
You can switch to MySQL, and I have documented how a few times (Install MySQL before installing Virtualmin; the one exception to “don’t preinstall anything before running the installer”).
We recommend you stick with the defaults, unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. Some apps are better tested on one DB or the other, though both are generally expected to work for most users most of the time. Where there are compatibility issues, they are more likely to be with MySQL, both because the community has shifted toward MariaDB and because MySQL has made several nonsensical incompatible changes since the two diverged. MariaDB today is likely more compatible with MySQL of ten years ago than MySQL of today is with MySQL of ten years ago.
