I am installing MariaDB in Fedora 34 server with the following sequence of commands:

sudo dnf upgrade -y

sudo dnf install -y mariadb-server mariadb-devel

sudo dnf -y install git vim

With this sequence of commands, I get the following installed:

$ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.5.13-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper

and I can successfully perform the initial setup of the root password:

sudo mysqladmin -u root password password

and continue with the rest of my installation.

However, if I change the sequence of commands to:

sudo dnf upgrade -y

sudo dnf -y install git vim

sudo dnf install -y mariadb-server mariadb-devel

What I get installed instead is:

$ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 8.0.27 for Linux on x86_64 (Source distribution)

and the 'sudo mysqladmin -u root password password' command fails with:

mysqladmin: unable to change password; error: 'You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near '() IDENTIFIED BY 'secretdatabase'' at line 1'

Could anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks!