Note that if you like to keep reference to merge requests and the "commit grouping" that merge commits allow, you may very well use FF-only merges with merge commits. You can then use things like `git log --first-parent` to have sort of high-level "merged MRs" view on your history, which may be useful for some workflows. GitHub's (and GitLab's) history view is pretty bad, but that doesn't mean all history views are so featureless as these Web UIs ;)