Setup Drupal with MariaDB instead of MySQL on local ubuntu machine and it works perfectly :) No changes where required except for replacing MySQL with MariaDB.

http://pshahmumbai.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/mariadb-drupal-on-ubuntu/

just that someone might be interested in experimenting with something new :)

Performance seems to be slow, or maybe its just me :)

MariaDB link : http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/MariaDB