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Debian vs MariaDB on CentOS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 2025

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
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MariaDB on CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
YK
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Reliable relational database has handled heavy payment traffic and has improved query speed
The best features MariaDB on CentOS offers is that it is a default database, so we can easily install it. It was a seamless installation out of the box. The other thing which we need and which MariaDB provides is the speed. For pooling and handling multiple connections on a single instance, MySQL and some other services provide their enterprise edition that we need to pay for. However, for MariaDB on CentOS, it is freely available and built-in. With respect to that, it is all seamless. We do not need to pay for anything, and we are utilizing the best connection pooling capability. We also got some performance speeds over our queries. It is also very much compatible. It is all the same as MySQL. It fully supports MySQL. It is already compatible with our previous projects, and if we introduce some new kind of thing, it can handle everything. MariaDB on CentOS has positively impacted our organization because we were on a different relational database and that was not holding that much connection and that much speed. After implementing MariaDB, it gives us so much ease to handle those issues. It has things inside it so we do not even need to change the configuration; it handles it with very ease. The replication thing is very good, and we have fewer read replicas because of the connection handling. The reader latency is very less. We do not get any idea that the data we are fetching from a master to a slave instance is different because the reader latency is very less. The primary thing that we got from MariaDB on CentOS is the connection handling capability. The connection was dropping, so that is totally resolved. We did not even find any single instance of this type of case after implementing MariaDB. The second thing is the speed. Sometimes it performs faster. When we do EXPLAIN and everything, it shows us what indexing it has been using, and they are much more efficient than the other relational database. It handles everything in a good way. It is a balanced configuration. By default, it provides a balanced configuration, so we do not need to look into that side. The faster query speed and the better replication feature that is open source, and we also have community support for that. The security updates are very fast. It also supports storage engines for different types of data we can simply use. One of the things that is not ideal is that the version which is default is sometimes older than the very latest.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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's best features are that it is very light and very comfortable for even older computers."
"Debian has positively impacted my organization by bringing strong security and consistent compliance awareness."
"Debian has been a very reliable and stable foundation for all the systems I have worked on, and its package management, transparency, and predictable updates have been extremely helpful, especially for embedded and production environments."
"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."
"The best features Debian offers are that it is fast, simple, and long-term supported."
"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 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 has positively impacted our organization in several ways."
"MariaDB on CentOS is faster than Oracle."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"In terms of scalability, Debian on-premises is not very scalable because it depends on your hardware."
"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."
"About the features of Debian, of course, it is a slow distribution like many others."
"Customer support for Debian has been acceptable. We approached the Azure Debian support, and while it seems adequate, they need to improve somewhat."
"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 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."
"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."
"One of the things that is not ideal is that the version which is default is sometimes older than the very latest."
"Many functionalities are not available in MariaDB on CentOS, so those aspects needed to be rewritten, particularly Oracle proprietary features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
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 seems acceptable. We have also used Ubuntu. Comparing to Ubuntu, Debian is cheaper.
What needs improvement with Debian?
In terms of improvements, I think Debian is fine as it is. I'm not an expert, so for me, it is acceptable.
What is your primary use case for Debian?
I have been using Debian for a while now. My main use case for Debian is running PostgreSQL and related infrastructure. A specific example of an application I'm running on Debian is PostgreSQL.
What is your primary use case for MariaDB on CentOS?
My main use case for MariaDB on CentOS in my last organization was in the telecom domain, where clients mainly focused on the database called MariaDB, for which we set up on-premises servers runnin...
What advice do you have for others considering MariaDB on CentOS?
I can share that after switching to MariaDB on CentOS, we saw great advantages in terms of high availability performance, particularly compared to other operating systems such as Linux and Unix pla...
 

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: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.