In MariaDB 10.4 and later, there are some notable changes, such as:

• You can specify multiple authentication plugins for each user account.
• The root@localhost user created by mysql_install_db is created with the ability to use two authentication plugins. First, it is configured to try to use the unix_socket authentication plugin. This allows the the root@localhost user to login without a password via the local Unix socket file defined by the socket system variable, as long as the login is attempted from a process owned by the operating system root user account. Second, if authentication fails with the unix_socket authentication plugin, then it is configured to try to use the mysql_native_password authentication plugin. However, an invalid password is initially set, so in order to authenticate this way, a password must be set with SET PASSWORD.