Hi @tilt, thanks for reaching out. DevKinsta uses NGINX by default with Mariadb and we don’t have any immediate plans to expand on this but you are welcome to submit a feature request. If those two are absolutely necessary for your development process then you may have to use a different local development application like XAMPP.
As for the slowness, are you sure it’s purely because of the database? Right now there is a known performance issue with Windows/Mac because of how site files are stored but we are working on improving this. If you are on Windows, you can try updating to the latest DevKinsta version and switching to Hyper-V for improved loading. If you are on Mac, you can update to the latest version of Docker and enable virtiofs Speed boost achievement unlocked on Docker Desktop 4.6 for Mac - Docker
Please let me know if you would like to add the NGINX rule that you linked; It’s not as simple as .htaccess but I can guide you with how to do that with Docker.