For all of you may know a lot of people using MariaDb as alternative from MySQL database, since MariaDB have a plus than MySQL database when using for production.

When you want to access MariaDB on your own laptop with MySql workbench, you will find that it can't be done, since MySQL Workbench need mysql-client, this is the error when you try to install mysql-workbench over MariaDB

me@host:~/Downloads$ sudo apt-get install mysql-workbenchReading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mysql-workbench : Depends: mysql-client
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
me@host:~/Downloads$

but there is a solution, the solution will be a little bit techie because you need to compile, but in this tutorial, I will show you how to do it


  1. Download MySQL Workbench community version from here, save it on your download folder then you do this, go to Download folder and run this command
  2. dpkg-deb -x mysql-workbench-community-6.*.deb tmp_mysql-workbench
  3. dpkg-deb --control mysql-workbench-community-6.*.deb tmp_mysql-workbench/DEBIAN
  4. sed -i -e 's/mysql-client//' tmp_mysql-workbench/DEBIAN/control
  5. dpkg -b tmp_mysql-workbench mysql-workbench-community_patched.deb
  6. sudo dpkg -i mysql-workbench-community_patched.deb
  7. if there's error in step no 6, then run this command "sudo apt-get -f install"
That's it, now you can use mysql-workbench over MariaDB that installed on your laptop/computer