Sergei Golubchik writes:

Surely, it is possible to install a libevent 1.4 deb on Debian <= 5 and Ubuntu <= 9.04, right ? They are not in the default package repository - is that a big deal ? MariaDB is not either.

Possible yes, but only if one knows where to obtain such a .deb package. I don't know anywhere such a package is available for older Ubuntu/Debian? (One could try installing the package from a newer Ubuntu or Debian unstable, may or may not work. But in general in .deb world people expect to not have to manually go hunt for dependencies. Maybe .rpm is different?) MariaDB is in the "default" repository list if users put the OurDelta repository there, which is the recommended way to install .deb. - Kristian.