No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Debian vs MariaDB on CentOS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Debian
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MariaDB on CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
30th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Debian is 6.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB on CentOS is 0.1%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Debian6.1%
MariaDB on CentOS0.1%
Other93.8%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Badal Shrivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Embedded Linux / BSP Engineer at Veethree
Reliable platform has supported long-term on-prem deployments and predictable OTA updates
If I consider how Debian can be improved, it could be more accessible in making newer software versions available for users who need recent features while still maintaining default stable behavior. While backports help, the workflow could be streamlined. The release cycle can feel slow for rapidly evolving tools, and better guidance around mixing stable, backports, and testing would help. Regarding hardware support, Debian can be improved by supporting multiple BSPs, making it more versatile in the embedded domain. Hardware support for new devices can sometimes lag behind, which is understandable given Debian's focus on stability. Clearer guidance on handling newer hardware or firmware would be beneficial.
Giovanni Baruzzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Syntlogo GmbH
Reliable clustering has ensured continuous access and has simplified high‑availability operations
The Galera Cluster feature has helped me with high availability because it is stable, requiring at least three servers to have a stable cluster. If one member of the cluster stops for any reason, the service continues working, and as you restart the server, it synchronizes everything with the other members. It is very well designed; while it is a complex feature and is documented, every improvement in this area would be helpful, and this is a suggestion for the Galera and MariaDB on CentOS developers. MariaDB on CentOS is a very good SQL database that is open source, meaning no license cost for users. There are even commercial editions that offer support, but basically, you do not need to pay any license. It is very dependable and very clear.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Debian offers excellent stability and reliability as its best features."
"Debian offers features that are best for my needs, including being open source, which allows for the implementation of many things and the use of a wide variety of open-source tools."
"Debian has positively impacted my organization, and I have noticed specific improvements since adopting it."
"Debian's stability helps me in my daily work because my work relies on stability; I'm trying to deploy production workloads, and Debian offers that stability for me."
"Debian has positively impacted my organization by bringing strong security and consistent compliance awareness."
"Debian always provides zero downtime because all that is needed is to run pseudo APT upgrade and it fixes NGINX or the other packages that need to be fixed."
"Debian is the most straightforward and compatible option, which greatly simplifies our engineers' tasks."
"Debian positively impacts my organization by allowing us to utilize a much more lightweight operating system with Amazon EC2 instances, which greatly reduces costs because we can use EC2 instances with lower RAM."
"MariaDB on CentOS is almost identical to MySQL, and the experience is very similar."
"MariaDB on CentOS is a very good SQL database that is open source, meaning no license cost for users."
"MariaDB on CentOS has positively impacted our organization in several ways."
"MariaDB on CentOS has positively impacted my organization by providing more features compared to Oracle MySQL, particularly in terms of performance, advantages, and implemented features, leading to migrations from Oracle MySQL to MariaDB on CentOS."
"MariaDB on CentOS is faster than Oracle."
 

Cons

"I believe Debian can be improved by adding more containerization features out of the box, and it should make some updates when it comes to the UI."
"Debian should have a reset feature; if something goes wrong, such as when I have installed or modified any root file, there should be a reset feature to restore my initial default settings."
"I wish the company responsible for Debian would send communications about updates and new features to keep people informed and to give Debian the recognition and praise that it deserves."
"About the features of Debian, of course, it is a slow distribution like many others."
"What keeps it from being a perfect score is mainly the slow access to newer software and hardware support, as well as documentation that is somewhat fragmented for advanced use cases."
"I cannot say that I have seen a return on investment with Debian because I am a DevOps engineer, and it is my job to do this."
"The stable kernel because it is going to be older and naturally stable does not always support brand new components such as CPUs or specialized GPUs out of the box, which can make it difficult to use there."
"There are certain areas where Debian can definitely improve, particularly in restricted access privileges for certain aspects."
"One of the things that is not ideal is that the version which is default is sometimes older than the very latest."
"I think MariaDB on CentOS needs improvements in some memory-level implementations within the operating system, as I have noticed issues related to memory orientation, such as out-of-memory problems."
"You can always improve a product, and the area that is very sensitive in MariaDB on CentOS is the release and the backward compatibility."
"Many functionalities are not available in MariaDB on CentOS, so those aspects needed to be rewritten, particularly Oracle proprietary features."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Operating Systems (OS) for Business solutions are best for your needs.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Debian?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Debian is free, so there is no price.
What needs improvement with Debian?
Debian is already really great, so there is nothing to complain about regarding improvements. I do not have anything else to add about needed improvements.
What is your primary use case for Debian?
I have been using Debian for around 10 years now. My main use case for Debian is that it's a regular Linux operating system with many use cases and system servers. One specific example of how I use...
What is your primary use case for MariaDB on CentOS?
I use MariaDB on CentOS as a database for other applications, and in our field, we need absolute availability. MariaDB on CentOS offers, with an additional product called Galera, a very dependable ...
What advice do you have for others considering MariaDB on CentOS?
I am working with many technologies, including a quite old and stable technology named LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and some relatively new technologies for us, such as a Linux data...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Debian 12
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Debian vs. MariaDB on CentOS and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.