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Debian vs MariaDB on CentOS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Debian's open-source platform cuts costs by eliminating fees, supporting less powerful hardware, and enhancing efficiency with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
3.7
MariaDB on CentOS streamlines deployment, enhances performance, and reduces admin reliance, saving time and costs significantly.
There were direct cost savings since Debian has no licensing fees, and we did not require paid support, so it saved us considerable money.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
We were able to save a substantial amount by using Linux instead of Windows and spending a lot of money on Windows licenses.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
I have seen a return on investment; specifically, the cost is around zero because there is no need for a license, and since my whole team uses Debian, we are fine with the number of employees needed.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
I have seen a return on investment with MariaDB on CentOS; the management is easy.
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment through specific improvements in performance optimization for the application, resulting in a better user experience.
Senior Cloud Engineer at Globant
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Debian users mainly utilize community resources for support, with minimal dependence on official channels or third-party services.
Sentiment score
7.1
MariaDB on CentOS sees mixed reviews, with many relying on community support and some finding customer service lacking for complex issues.
We rely on community resources for support, such as documentation, forums, and asking questions online.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Whenever I had a query, I used Google to search for it and found very helpful information from public platforms.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
While it does not have traditional paid customer support like some commercial distributions, the Debian community and documentation are very strong.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
The communities and the blogs are already available, and we referred to those to accomplish what we needed.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
When we have some big problem on the database, we need to have a database administrator, not a person who reads instructions on the screen.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Customer support for MariaDB on CentOS is excellent and very good.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Debian is scalable and reliable in cloud environments, offering flexibility and efficient resource management for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
5.3
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for scalability despite challenges, with efficient replication and resource management reported by most users.
We don't spin up new Debian instances arbitrarily.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
As the growth of our infrastructure is required, we can host many Debian servers.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
We decided to use Debian because we needed a more stable and predictable base, especially for long-running systems where frequent changes or upgrades could cause issues.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
MariaDB on CentOS's scalability is impressive, as it easily handles the growth in data, users, and workload.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The scalability of MariaDB on CentOS depends on the use case.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Regarding the scalability of MariaDB on CentOS, it's pretty scalable.
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Debian is praised for stability and reliability, though some users note slow updates and older package versions.
Sentiment score
7.9
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for its stability, ease of management, superior documentation, and reliable clustering capabilities.
I rate Debian an eight out of ten because it excels in stability, reliability, and package management, which are very important for long-running production systems.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
That long-term support has helped me and my customers by being stable and running well.
Embedded Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In my experience, Debian is very stable.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
I rate the reliability and stability level of MariaDB on CentOS as very high; it is among the best databases that I have ever seen.
Owner at Syntlogo GmbH
Regarding stability, I have been working on my project for the last year and, while the project has run for four to five years, I have not seen any technical glitches from MariaDB on CentOS that caused downtime.
Software Developer at Apptom
MariaDB on CentOS is very much stable in my experience.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Debian requires improvements in package management, UI, onboarding, release cycle, network management, and better documentation to enhance user experience.
AI-enhanced optimization, compatibility updates, and deployment improvements are crucial for MariaDB on CentOS amidst repository management challenges.
I believe security on Debian is top-notch due to its long history and the many individuals and organizations that rely on it, meaning there are many eyes on it.
Founder at a media company with 1-10 employees
If Debian had a memory-based distribution, similar to Alpine, that would be great, as we could get benefits in terms of memory or embedded systems.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
Debian was easy to set up.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Postgres is easier to work with because you can use the explain plan to see directly and immediately if your new request is good or not.
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
For potential improvements that could be made in the future for MariaDB on CentOS, I think two or three things are needed; one is AI to support rewriting queries because at this stage every database supports AI.
Software Developer at Apptom
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.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Debian is cost-effective due to no licensing fees, making it ideal for enterprises compared to alternatives like Windows.
Enterprise users find MariaDB on CentOS cost-effective, with favorable pricing, eliminating licensing fees and flexible project-specific resource allocation.
My experience with Debian's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that it is all free.
IT Support Manager at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Debian is free, so there is no price.
Site Reliability Engineer Ii at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
As long as I remain within the limit of that credit, I can create machines as much as I want without exceeding the monthly limit.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, in our case, it was just the open-source MariaDB, so we did not require any licenses or setup costs; we just use it directly.
Software Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive since it is open source, and we did not have any issues with licensing and pricing.
Senior Cloud Engineer at Globant
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for MariaDB on CentOS has been that we use MariaDB Enterprise Edition, so the cost and pricing are very competitive.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
 

Valuable Features

Debian delivers stability, performance, and security with vast support and resources, ideal for enterprise environments and web services.
MariaDB on CentOS is praised for its performance, compatibility, advanced features, and cost-effectiveness, enhancing organizational workflows.
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.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
Debian has kept my workflow secure by maintaining system stability with day-to-day or monthly updates with security patches, securing the system from external attacks.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Debian has positively impacted my organization primarily in cost-efficiency, with on-premises hardware running faster and cheaper.
IT Support Manager at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
Many functionalities are not available in MariaDB on CentOS, so those aspects needed to be rewritten, particularly Oracle proprietary features.
Architect at LTIMindtree
We set it up for high availability in the production environment using the 2.x version and the latest version with a GUI, making it an advanced feature for high availability, especially when the master goes down, allowing the slave to take over read and write mode automatically, without any interaction or impact on the application side.
D V A 3 at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The primary thing that we got from MariaDB on CentOS is the connection handling capability.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Debian
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MariaDB on CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
23rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Debian is 6.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MariaDB on CentOS is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Debian6.2%
MariaDB on CentOS0.2%
Other93.6%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2795433 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Lightweight platform has reduced cloud costs and has kept long‑running web apps reliable
In my opinion, the best features Debian offers include its stability. The stable branch really is stable because once it is configured, I understand you can run it for a very long period of time without needing to reboot or update any of the components. That is really good when you want an application to be extremely stable and not go down, and you are happy using slightly older components. I also value the fact that Debian is open source, so it is free. That is very useful, and it has a big development community that builds it. I understand there are tens of thousands of software libraries which work with Debian from the apt package manager, APT, and also it is very lightweight, which I find to be good as well because that helps with cost savings. Debian's lightweight design benefits my organization because it does not come with bloatware, minimizing RAM usage. Because of that, we can choose cheaper EC2 instances. You do not have to have as powerful RAM, which makes things cheaper, and also because it does not come with all this bloatware, it also makes it faster. So it is very efficient. 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. Cost savings are good. Debian is very well known across the industry, so different engineers from different teams know how to use it. Using the APT package manager is a common skill for cloud professionals, which makes it good, especially if you are hiring individuals into the company, because at least you would expect they have some type of background using Debian. I do not know exact measurements, but I would expect we could save at least 10% of costs with EC2 instances just because our memory and CPU requirements would be lower because Debian is lightweight. So it would save cost to some degree.
DM
Performance Testing And A PM Expert at ADM
Performance tests have been streamlined for analysis while query tuning still needs improvement
The technical support or community support for MariaDB on CentOS is bad. There is a main problem with all the companies that sell this kind of tool and services. The first level of support is the first one you reach. When you begin to have a more difficult problem, there is no one available because sometimes you need to update the call and recall on it. This is not good because when we have some big problem on the database, we need to have a database administrator, not a person who reads instructions on the screen. It is always the same problem. My rating is two.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
35%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Transportation Company
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Debian?
The pricing for Debian is based on what is used and how much is used.
What needs improvement with Debian?
Debian currently has some older packages that are not available in the latest version. The stable release cycle is slow, where new features come late. Additionally, Debian is not as beginner-friend...
What is your primary use case for Debian?
Debian is used as a Linux distributor for hosting applications, servers, and deployments. The organization primarily relies on Debian for cloud and DevOps, creating Docker images and Kubernetes nod...
What is your primary use case for MariaDB on CentOS?
My main use case for MariaDB on CentOS is as a database for my application. A quick specific example of how I'm using MariaDB on CentOS for my application includes Laravel-based applications and Wo...
What advice do you have for others considering MariaDB on CentOS?
I would rate MariaDB on CentOS a nine on a scale of one to ten. I choose a nine because there is always room for improvement for any software, but in general, it is a reliable, stable, and easy-to-...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB on CentOS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive since it is open source, and we did not have any issues with licensing and pricing. My costs are based on resource allocation...
 

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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.