I was using github.com/explore almost daily while it lasted. The trending repositories by language were an amazing tool to discover new tools and ideas.
I really wish GitLab had something equivalent to this!
In our 15.10 release (March 22), we added a new section called Explore that helps with content discovery and includes a tab for Trending projects that can be filtered by language. You can read out it in the release notes [0] or just go check it out [1].
0 - https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2023/03/22/gitlab-15-10-re...
They seem to have based the whole thing on the way Bitbucket works and completely ignored that being able to find a repo you've not been directly added to would be slightly useful.
If someone from gitlab is reading this and thinking "But you can find things" - you're blinded by the issue being an internal user. There might be ways of doing it, but its a convoluted mess and doesn't come close to github in that regard.