This is the my.cnf file I use in my server, hope you find it useful:

Code: 
[mariadb]
default-storage-engine=myisam
ignore-builtin-innodb
optimizer_switch='derived_merge=off,materialization=off'
pbxt=off

[mysqld]
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
port	= 3306
key_buffer_size = 32M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_open_cache = 256
sort_buffer_size = 1M
net_buffer_length = 16K
read_buffer_size = 512K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 1M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 16M
thread_cache_size = 4

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
# Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL
#safe-updates

[myisamchk]
key_buffer_size = 20M
sort_buffer_size = 20M
read_buffer = 2M
write_buffer = 2M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout