In what is sure to the the most exciting release announcement of the day (ahem), Monty Program and the MariaDB community are happy to announce the immediate availability of a (mostly?) stable beta release of MariaDB 5.1!

This is a beta. It may well have undiscovered bugs or features that are not fully baked. But the expectation is that we have fixed most of the issues like these, and so we’re looking to the broader community to help us get to a state where we can offer a Release Candidate. So start hammering on MariaDB, and be sure to report any bugs.

If you’re curious as to what we have baked into MariaDB 5.1, and what differentiates us from our upstream project, be sure to look over our guide to MariaDB vs. MySQL®.

If you want to dive right in, you can find source and binary tarballs on the MariaDB download page. And before you ask, yes, we are working on Debian and Red Hat packages. It’s a high priority.

Now, GO! Download and help us polish up an RC!