this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
348 points (97.5% liked)

Selfhosted

60210 readers
1035 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 199 points 5 months ago (28 children)

MySQL belongs to Oracle. That's literally all you need to.know in order to avoid it.

[–] FlowerFan@piefed.blahaj.zone 64 points 5 months ago (1 children)

how did the joke go? "one rich asshole called larry ellison"?

[–] ijhoo@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 25 points 5 months ago

It spells Oracle.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Isn’t that the point of Postgresql. It’s basically an open source version of MySQL.

I’m sure there are some proprietary nonsense that MySQL has, but I’ve never needed it in 17 years

[–] sobchak@programming.dev 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Postgres is basically an open source version of Oracle DB. Much more featureful than MySQL. I believe Oracle bought MySQL just to kill it.

[–] msage@programming.dev 13 points 5 months ago

MySQL always sucked ass.

PostgreSQL went in a different direction, started with best support of the SQL standard, then optimized everything to make it fast.

Postgres has/had the best SQL standard support out of every server, open-source or not.

MySQL was at the other end, only started catching up after Oracle bought it.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 29 points 5 months ago

afaik MariaDB is the open source version of MySQL

[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That is an insult to PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL was fully featured relational database even before it implemented SQL. It started much earlier tha MySQL.

And MySQL didn't have proper transactions or data integrity constraints (including foreign keys) for long time, while calling itself an 'SQL database'.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (26 replies)
[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 89 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Stop using mysql, you have postgres.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 25 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] call_me_xale@lemmy.zip 43 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hell, even SQLite is good enough for most small projects.

[–] dan@upvote.au 38 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

SQLite is underrated. I've used it for high traffic systems with no issues. If your system has a large number of readers and a small number of writers, it performs very well. It's not as good for high-concurrency write-heavy use cases, but that's not common (most apps read far more than they write).

My use case was a DB that was created during the build process, then read on every page load.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] immobile7801@piefed.social 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

FWIW mariadb was bought by a private equity firm in 2024

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] melfie@lemy.lol 55 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Oracle sees itself as an activist organization, one whose goal is the advancement of the Israeli colonization project. Safra Catz, the company’s Israeli-American CEO, bluntly explained that any employees uncomfortable with supporting a genocide should simply quit. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none” (source)

Hmm, MySQL or PostgreSQL—how will we ever decide which one to pick.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 53 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Didn't Postgresql effectively win the database wars? Why use anything else?

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 29 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Postgres or sqlite are the only ones I ever consider nowadays.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 47 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

MariaDB >>>

I've been using it since ever on my rpi because they say it's easier on resources

[–] YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Who are “they”?

We use MariaDB at work but I don’t know why it was originally chosen over PostgreSQL, as that was before my time.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 43 points 5 months ago

If you don't want to use postgresql for some obscure reason use MariaDB real open source MySQL drop in replacement.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 42 points 5 months ago (12 children)

Are there real advantages to using either MySQL or MariaDB instead of PostgreSQL?

No. But there are a number of advantages of using PostgreSQL over the others.

[–] Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah,
I did a speed test comparison between Oracle MySQL and MariaDB MySQL,
MariaDB is about 10 times faster.

FYI: When Oracle bought MySQL a lot of developers left and created MariaDB, so the brains behind the project moved, and in the meantime Oracle did a great job of fucking things up.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's not what I asked. I asked about a comparison of both of them to PostgreSQL.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] 800XL@lemmy.world 40 points 5 months ago

What year is this? No one should be using Mysql since MariaDB came about.

[–] BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why would anyone ever choose mysql over postgres?

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 11 points 5 months ago (4 children)

MySQL has been the "default" choice for a long time for PHP programmers. I don't know why.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It used to be free with less of a barrier to entry than postgres

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 27 points 5 months ago

No one should be using MySQL since 2010.

[–] UnknownMp@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago

Perhaps MariaDB is a better choice.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What rock do you live under if you're using MySQL over MariaDB?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] dan@upvote.au 12 points 5 months ago

MariaDB is not always a drop-in replacement. There's several features that MySQL has that MariaDB doesn't, especially related to the optimizer (for some types of queries, MySQL will give you a more optimized execution plan compared to MariaDB). It's also missing some newer data types, like JSON (which indexes the individual fields in JSON objects to make filtering on them more efficient).

MariaDB and MySQL are both fine. Even though MySQL doesn't receive as much development any more, it doesn't really need it. It works fine. If you want a better database system, switch to PostgreSQL, not MariaDB.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 months ago

That's why I moved to MSSQL

/s

load more comments
view more: next ›