MariaDB is not a drop in replacement for MySQL

[NoMoreTears]

Well, MariaDB is not a drop in replacement for MySQL. Most importantly user authentication and credential management diverge significantly. Significant problems with phpMyAdmin too.

I will not even get into the incredibly bad practice of an application trying to doppelganger as a completely different application.

I get the whole emotional marketing gimmick around MariaDB, but this isn't suppose to be junior high and you are suppose to be smarter than that. XAMPP was billed as an easy way to run experimental stack that users typically find in the hosting world.

Not exactly a tremendous list compared to MySQL...
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/web-hosting-providers-offering-mariadb/