Alternative to skip locked in mariaDB

Instead of using a lock to indicate a queue record is being processed, use an indexed processing column. Set it to 0 for new records, and, in a separate transaction from any processing, select a single not yet processing record and update it to 1. Possibly also store the time and process or thread id and server that is processing the record. Have a separate monitoring process to detect jobs flagged as processing that did not complete processing within the expected time.

An alternative that avoids even the temporary lock on a non-primary index needed to select a record is to use a separate, non-database message queue to notify you of new records available in the database queue. (Unless you won't ever care if a unit of work is processed more than once, I would always use a database table in addition to any non-database queue.)

DELETE FROM QUEUE_TABLE LIMIT 1 RETURNING *

for dequeue operations. Depending on your needs it might work ok

Update 2022-06-14:

MariaDB supports SKIP LOCKED now.