Ben's articles are always informative. I've used quite a few different BE's to Access. The most stable and flexible was actually IBM's DB2. The worst was Sybase which is what I think SQL Server is based on.
I don't think that MySQL is much different. I'm not sure that MariaDB is a relational database but if it is, it will also work. That is why Access is called "Access". It works with ALL RDBMS' that support ODBC. You can make a lot of work for yourself and do everything with unbound forms and pass through queries and stored procedures, or since you committed to using an Access FE, you can use Access as the RAD tool that it is and do things the "Access" way with linked tables and querydefs and bound forms/reports. You won't get the optimum performance but you will get the optimum development time and optimum flexibility and if you are not sloppy with your code or use old style Jet/ACE techniques (like form filters) rather than good client/server techniques, you will get performance that no one will complain about. If I were going to eschew the use of bound forms/reports and querydefs, I would never use Access. As with typical development projects, it's a pick two out of three. Whenever you develop with Access as the platform (Access is NOT a database engine so I'm only talking about building the FE), you give up the ability to twiddle bits and that means you are giving up a certain amount of execution speed for dramatically increased development speed and flexibility.
Access is infinitely extendable provided you don't use Jet/ACE BE's and don't need web access. Once you use RDBMS for the BE, you are limited to seat licenses for your RDBMS of choice rather than the hard limit of 255 or practical limit of 50-100 concurrent users with Jet/ACE BE's