Hello!
Well, I think I have solved my start up problem with MariaDB myself by carefully editing the my.cnf file located in /etc and un-comment the following sections:
# The following options will be passed to all MariaDB clients
[client]
# password = your_password
port = 3306
socket = /var/run/mysql/mysql.sock
and leave the following commented:
[mysqld]
# Remove leading # if you don't want to listen on network (only socket - safer)
# skip-networking
and un-comment the following:
# WARNING
# --------
# If you uncomment mysqld1 than make absolutely sure, that database mysql,
# configured above, is not started. This may result in corrupted data!
#
[mysqld1]
port = 3306
datadir = /var/lib/mysql
pid-file = /var/lib/mysql/mysqld.pid
socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user = mysql
and saving these changes to /etc/my.cnf
Then I executed the following to restart mariaDB/mysql, what OpenSUSE refers to mysql.service:
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~> sudo systemctl restart mysql.service
root's password:
When I checked the status of the mysql.service, it reported as follows:
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~> sudo systemctl status -l mysql.service
mysql.service - MySQL server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2016-12-29 17:40:04 EST; 36s ago
Process: 14367 ExecStartPost=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper wait (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 14357 ExecStartPre=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper upgrade (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 14349 ExecStartPre=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper install (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 14366 (mysqld)
CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
└─14366 /usr/sbin/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --user=mysql
Dec 29 17:40:03 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site systemd[1]: Starting MySQL server...
Dec 29 17:40:03 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[14367]: Waiting for MySQL to start
Dec 29 17:40:03 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[14366]: 161229 17:40:03 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld (mysqld 10.0.27-MariaDB) starting as process 14366 ...
Dec 29 17:40:04 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[14367]: MySQL is alive
Dec 29 17:40:04 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site systemd[1]: Started MySQL server.
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~>
No errors reported!
Then I execute the following to create the database for Amarok:
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~> mysql -u root
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 6
Server version: 10.0.27-MariaDB openSUSE package
Copyright (c) 2000, 2016, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
MariaDB (none)]> CREATE USER 'amarokuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'amarokpass';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB (none)]> CREATE DATABASE amarokdb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)
MariaDB (none)]> GRANT ALL ON amarokdb.* TO 'amarokuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'amarokpass';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
MariaDB (none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB (none)]> exit
Bye
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~>
I then restart the mysql.service as follows:
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~> sudo systemctl restart mysql.service
root's password:
and verify that the mysql.service is proporly running with:
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~> sudo systemctl status -l mysql.service
mysql.service - MySQL server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2016-12-29 19:26:43 EST; 1min 8s ago
Process: 15316 ExecStartPost=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper wait (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15306 ExecStartPre=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper upgrade (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15296 ExecStartPre=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-systemd-helper install (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 15315 (mysqld)
CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
└─15315 /usr/sbin/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --user=mysql
Dec 29 19:26:41 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site systemd[1]: Starting MySQL server...
Dec 29 19:26:42 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[15316]: Waiting for MySQL to start
Dec 29 19:26:42 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[15315]: 161229 19:26:42 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld (mysqld 10.0.27-MariaDB) starting as process 15315 ...
Dec 29 19:26:43 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site mysql-systemd-helper[15316]: MySQL is alive
Dec 29 19:26:43 DASmith-Thinkpad-01.site systemd[1]: Started MySQL server.
davids@DASmith-Thinkpad-01:~>
which it is! Wow!!! 
Now hopefully this will work with Amarok after I configure Amarok to use it.
This was an odd experianse for me because after I initially installed mariaDB and all it’s dependencies, it complained that it couldn’t find the libjemalloc.so.1 file and I searched and searched for a few days for the rpm package containing this file before I found it yesterday. It seems like this rpm package should have been linked as one of mariaDB’s required dependencies to be automatically installed with mariaDB in order for the mariaDB rpm package to work.
Come on guys, mariaDB isn’t a MS software project as of yet? 
Anyway, thanks for reading this,
David A. Smith