i know mariadb is created by monty but does anyone know any difference btw these two. Is it worth going with mariadb? is it frequently updated and maintained with bugfixes?
They are compatible to each other. (MariaDB is a Fork of MySQL but they also point out they will stay compatible) MariaDB offers more choices for the storage engine and some speed improvements. I personally would not see a reason to change for standard apps using MySQL, but you probably should run some benchmarks for your specific app to see if it makes a huge difference.
If you're looking for increased performance and reliability, I suggest checking out the Percona MySQL builds. They offer substancial improvements and backup capabilities, and stay in line with MySQL build tracks. http://www.percona.com/software/
Yup worth switching http://vbtechsupport.com/606/ and http://vbtechsupport.com/657/. MariaDB 5.2.8 was just released http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-528-release-notes and best version to switch to. MariaDB 5.3.0 is in beta release with more performance improvements with back porting of some MySQL 5.5/6.0 patches AFAIK and big feature is group commit feature which improves mysql replication performance. Best pages to bookmark to keep up to date with MariaDB http://kb.askmonty.org/en/ http://downloads.askmonty.org/mariadb/ note: MariaDB includes Percona's XtraDB/InnoDB storage engine, so you get the benefits of MariaDB MyISAM improvements + Percona's InnoDB improvements.