In order to run GitLab w/o any tweaks you need 1GB Linode.
You can start it on 512 but you need to setup unicorn to use only 1 worker and you need at least 200MB of swap
Is 1GB really requred for personal use? I thought about buying 256/512 VPS exclusively for GitLab, don't you think it will be enough for personal projects?
Maybe someone who has the knowledge can write tutorial about configuring GL to run on average VPS?