I'm sorry to hear your GitLab install didn't work out. I agree that right now the setup can be better. Just made a ticket to consolidate the install scripts, hopefully this helps making things work on multiple platforms. https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/2351
I've just spent the last 5 (five!) hours trying to setup GitLab, and I just don't get it to work. And I ain't no rookie either. This is the second time in about a year that I spent so much time trying to get this to work, and I'm about to give up on this project. I want this to work, and I want to use this, but this is insane.
I actually did a dist-upgrade from Lenny just to get this to work, and I made it through all the arcane steps (somehow) - but nothing. I can't get it to work. I can connect to GitLab, it redirects me to 'users/sign_in', and then it just crashes ('Killed', it says). Yup. Tough luck for me. That's five hours down the drain.