I also dumped MySQL and started using and recommending MariaDB in production since i've seen it resolve a lot of my hard fought battles with super complex neste

I also dumped MySQL and started using and recommending MariaDB in production since i've seen it resolve a lot of my hard fought battles with super complex nested joins and index overloads. Queries that took 4.5s went to 450ms just by dropping in this beauty. From then on I was on the bandwagon. Slow Wordpress site with a ton of plugins that tries to solve everything? Now it can do it within a timeframe thats acceptable. Ok your bottlenecks will still be there somewhat.. abeit less apparent. But it just is faster and scales way more predictable imo with hardware adapted configs.