MariaDB is an enhanced drop-in replacement for MySQL. MySQL 5.1 is compatible with MariaDB 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3. MySQL 5.5 is compatible with MariaDB 5.5. Features of MariaDB >> Data and table definition files (.frm) are binary compatible. >> All client APIs, protocols and struct are identical >> All filenames, binaries, paths, ports, sockets etc should be the same. >> All MySQL connectors (PHP, Perl, Python, Java, .NET, MyODBC, Ruby, MySQL C connector) works unchanged with MariaDB. >> mysql-client package also works with MariaDB server >> The shared client-library is binary compatible with MySQL’s client library This indicates that we can just uninstall MySQL and install MariaDB.