XAMPP is now packaged with MariaDB. MariaDB is a community version of MySql. It was created because programmers want to keep the database server open sourced. MySql is now owned by Oracle. Anyways, here’s a download link for MariaDB: https://downloads.mariadb.org/
To get the currently installed version of MySql, use command
(xampp install path)/mysql/bin/mysql --version
This command works on Windows. It may be different on Lenix.
The correlation of MySQL version and MariaDB version is as follow: MariaDB 10.0 is a previous stable version of MariaDB. It is built on the MariaDB 5.5 series with back ported features from MySQL 5.6 and entirely new features not found anywhere else. MariaDB 10.1 is the current stable version. It is based off MariaDB 10.0.
To Upgrade MySql included in XAMPP (I did it on a Windows system):
- Rename your Mysql directory to some other name.
- Download the .msi file from the MariaDB link.
- Run .msi. Change the install directory to your Mysql location under XAMPP.
- After completion, copy the old my.ini from the original mysql/bin directory to your new mysql/bin directory.
- You should be able to start Mysql from the XAMPP control panel.
Note: I did it with downloads from MySql web site. It did not work.