[techntoke]

I used to love GitLab, and I still do in a lot of ways but I will no longer recommend them.

If you're looking for a shiny pretty interface for all your users, then Gitea can serve the same purpose. Personally, I find cgit to look fine too. I think GitLab simply tries to do too much, and they've built their entire app on a poorly scalable and bloated tech stack.

I think SourceHut probably provides the best platform for teaching developers a more native way to use Git that provides most of the same features as GitLab. For CI/CD there are so many better options outside of GitLab that integrate into Kubernetes and you won't regret it.