Hey there, I thought about starting my own Lemmy instance, yet I’d really like to use my already running MariaDB server for the database. I haven’t found anything in the docs (might be me though). Is that possible or will I have to set up Postgresql?
If the application doesn’t say anything about MariaDB or MySQL then it won’t work. The SQL statements are different enough that there needs to be an explicit support.
You could contribute and add support, but that might be a bit of work.
Also the glory days of MySQL are over. MySQL started with goal to be fast, and placed correctness as an afterthought. Meanwhile PostgreSQL placed correctness as the most important goal. As time passed, PostgreSQL made many speed optimizations, while MySQL was forced to replace fast MyISAM engine with slower but more correct InnoDB, but the old design decisions still cause issues. As an SRE I’ve seen multiple times where MySQL and MariaDB also corrupted its own data.
I actually don’t know your reasons to still sticking with it, but if you can I would recommend to give PostgreSQL a try it is much better experience for developers as well as for operations. There’s a reason that less and less apps support MySQL/MariaDB.