I already have several MySQL DBs running on my Ubuntu 14.04 Server, and I would like to migrate these as smoothly as possible to the compatible MariaDB. I'm also using PHPMyAdmin. Is there a different way to do this than to export all data and then reimport it all after installation?
It turned out to be as simple as:
This won't break your phpmyadmin, or any webapp, as long as you say no, when asked if you want to delete your database and you use the same credentials you used for you mysql-DB. Also back up your data before doing this.
Andreas Hartmann's answer is incomplete, and it also removes PHPMYADMIN and MYSQLI
So, in addition to mariadb-server, you should install the following:
To get phpMyAdmin working again on SSL only, you'll need to reconfigure etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf to include the http=>https rewrite.
If you're running a LAMP server with Postfix with Dovecot, you will also need to do the following:
The last three (3) apt-get statements might not be necessary, since libclass-dbi-mysql-perl might install them for you, depending on how update your package list is.
If you are running other software, you will need to test it and install any missing libraries that might have been removed by auto-dependency calculations.
Update
The FTP service was removed as well (PureFTPD in my case) and needed to be installed:
apt-get install pure-ftpd-common pure-ftpd-mysql