What is happening to you is a potential compatibility problem. Mysql Workbench is a product Oracle and MariaDB do not.
Here I leave the link where it gives you a detailed explanation of what is happening to you.
Go to the link
Text quoted in the accepted response of the link, the list of incompatibilities of each version can be found on the MariaDB page:
MariaDB is a binary descendant to replace MySQL
For all practical purposes, MariaDB is a binary descendant replacing the same version of MySQL . (For example, MySQL 5.1 -> MariaDB 5.1, MariaDB 5.2 & MariaDB 5.3 are compatible, MySQL 5.5 will be compatible with MariaDB 5.5). What this means:
- The definition of data and tables in files (.frm) are files
compatible binaries.
- All client APIs, protocols and structures are identical.
- All the names of files, binaries, routes, ports, sockets, etc. They must be the same.
- All MySQL connectors (Connectors such as PHP, Perl, Python, Java,
.NET, MyODBC, Ruby, MySQL, C, etc.) work unchanged with MariaDB.
- There are some PHP5 installation problems with which you should
be careful (as in the old PHP5 client that marked a
compatibility error with the library).
- The mysql-client package also works with MariaDB server.
- The shared client library is binary-compatible with the MySQL client library.
This means that for many cases, you can just un-install MySQL and install MariaDB and you're ready to start. (You do not need to convert any data file if you use the same version, such as 5.1).
We make monthly comparisons with the source code of MySQL to be sure that we continue with compatibility and have all the features and bug fixes added by Oracle.
We have also done a lot of work on the update scripts to the point that it is now easier to upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to MariaDB 5.1 than from MySQL 5.0 to MySQL 5.1.