It's a shame because I like GitLabs UX and runners much more than other forges. I've been considering forking gitlab and removing complexity. GitLab uses multiple GB of memory idle with no users. It's sad.

I agree. GitLab UI was great and the simplicity of its CI/CD is unequaled on other forges. It's sad that Forgejo went with the actions model from GitHub which introduce a lot of useless complexity. But it seems that Woodpecker CI [1] could be a good candidate to replace GitLab CI, as it uses very similar concepts and workflow description files.

[1] https://woodpecker-ci.org/