Case Study: freedesktop.org achieves modernized workflows and streamlined collaboration with GitLab

Freedesktop.org, the home of open source desktop technology development, has migrated to GitLab to improve their workflow and modernize their service

freedesktop.org, the neutral home for open source desktop technology (hosting projects like X.Org, Mesa, GStreamer and more, with ~1,300 registered committers and ~25,000 mailing-list subscribers), faced a fragmented, volunteer-run stack—LDAP, Bugzilla, Mailman, cgit, Patchwork, Jenkins and other patched services—that could not provide modern, integrated developer workflows. To modernize and stop projects from leaving for other hosts, freedesktop.org chose GitLab, adopting GitLab Core and a Kubernetes-backed deployment.

GitLab consolidated repository management, issue tracking, code review, CI pipelines, container registries, wikis and single sign-on (including external providers and two‑factor auth), plus improved spam controls, into one coherent platform. The move to GitLab has enabled projects to self-serve modern workflows, drastically reduced admin overhead and sped up development and onboarding, while improving security and spam handling for the freedesktop.org community.

freedesktop.org

Havoc Pennington

Developer