I've been an Oracle DBA for decades now. I've used other databases along the way, on Windows, HP-UX, Linux, and VMS. I try to avoid using Windows unless I have to because compared to other OS's I've used it doesn't have the same stability and robustness I've come to expect. They do everything different deliberately, from using back slashes when the rest of the world uses forward slashes, having a binary registry which makes maintenance a nightmare (reinstalling is sometimes preferable over attempting to uninstall some software package), and many operations that would be trivial in Linux are hard to impossible in Windows. And then there's the mantra that sums it up: In Windows reboot, in Linux be root.
With regards to MariaDB (MySQL), it's popular like Windows is popular. But there's a ISO SQL standard that the other vendors do a better job of following, and fundamental relational elements like referential integrity constraints, nested and coorelated subqueries, and ACID compliance that just don't work right.
A casual computer user will never know what makes Windows hard to administer, and admins who only work on Windows think they know computers, when clearly they don't. A developer new to databases has no experience to know the difference between them, so if they go the popular route like most people do, then they'll just accept MariaDB quirks as normal not knowing any better. When you've used others, then the differences become clear.
There are plenty of opinion articles on the web about which is better, so I'm not going to summarize them all here. Do some research, learn from others experience.