GitLab CEO here. I agree that GitFlow is needlessly complex and that there should be one main branch. The author advises to merge in feature branches by rebasing them on master. I think that it is harmful to rewrite history. You will lose cherry-picks, references in issues and testing results (CI) of those commits if you give them a new identifier.
The power of git is the ability to work in parallel without getting in each-others way. No longer having a linear history is an acceptable consequence. In reality the history was never linear to begin with. It is better to have a messy but realistic history if you want to trace back what happend and who did and tested what at what time. I prefer my code to be clean and my history to be correct.
I prefer to start with GitHub flow (merging feature branches without rebasing) and described how to deal with different environments and release branches in GitLab Flow https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/29/gitlab-flow/
The power of git is the ability to work in parallel without getting in each-others way. No longer having a linear history is an acceptable consequence. In reality the history was never linear to begin with. It is better to have a messy but realistic history if you want to trace back what happend and who did and tested what at what time. I prefer my code to be clean and my history to be correct.
I prefer to start with GitHub flow (merging feature branches without rebasing) and described how to deal with different environments and release branches in GitLab Flow https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/29/gitlab-flow/