The Apache Friends website says, "XAMPP Apache + MariaDB + PHP + Perl".
Being a new user, I don't know how long ago you switch your focus from MySQL to MariaDB.
I watched the introductory video here: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html
Please excuse if you already know this...
In the video, and in several recent posts in this forum, it still references MySQL.
You might want to redo the video, if your new focus is MariaDB.
Respectfully,
encoder