For CentOS 7 and MariaDB 10.4, I had success with the following commands:
su -
systemctl set-environment MYSQLD_OPTS="--skip-grant-tables --user=mysql"
systemctl restart mariadb
mysql -u root
flush privileges;
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass';
flush privileges;
quit
systemctl unset-environment MYSQLD_OPTS
systemctl restart mariadb