I can confirm that upkeep of Gitlab is rather easy and does not take much time. Just the occasional update every few weeks. For its size it is also quite robust and the integrations it offers work well.

The only thing I can really complain about are the constant UI changes that do not actually improve anything. I fell they are just changes for change's sake to keep some frontend devs busy.

Which repo are you getting your GitLab .deb packages from?

Also, Debian/Ubuntu OS security updates happen a lot more often than once a month. I suggest just using unattended-upgrades, it can even auto-reboot at a convenient time of the day after Linux kernel security updates.

> continuous integration

Yes: https://docs.gitea.com/usage/actions/overview

> pages

No, but if you have some sort of static content hosting set up (like a S3 bucket), it shouldn't be difficult to set up publishing to that with actions. It's also got project wikis built in.

> user permission management

Yes: https://docs.gitea.com/usage/permissions

I think they are both great choices and it's a matter of personal preference.

Do you distrust the new for-profit company that owns Gitea? Do you believe that all software should be libre? Choose Forgejo.

Do you believe having a for-profit company behind gives the project more budget for feature development? Do you think that using a GPLv3 licensed software is problematic in legal terms? Choose Gitea.