When comparing Launchpad vs Gitea, the Slant community recommends Gitea for most people. In the question“What are the best alternatives to GitHub for Open Source projects?” Gitea is ranked 3rd while Launchpad is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Gitea is:
Easy to install and setup. Can run on a VPS with 1 core CPU and 256MB RAM.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Support for web based translation
Launchpad makes it easy to translate free open source projects into virtually any language in the world. Users are allowed to start working on translating any project they want just by having a Launchpad account and a web browser. Most of the time they don't have to even join a team to start working and the editor is web based, so there is no need for any special software.
Pro Integrated build/deployment system
If you use launchpad, it gives you a build system (on their platform) as well as easier deployment - user merely adds your PPA to their sources.list file. Deployment (on Ubuntu, at least - other debians as well) doesn't get simpler than this.
Pro Great bug tracking features
Launchpad is built to be used for open source projects, as such it needs a powerful bug trackers to allow developers who want to contribute to jump right in. Launchpad displays bug statistics (total number of bugs, number of bugs fixed etc...) as well. Bugs can be searched and displayed from every project hosted on Launchpad or for single projects.
Pro Light-weight
Easy to install and setup. Can run on a VPS with 1 core CPU and 256MB RAM.
Pro Open source and maintained by community
Unlike Gogs, which is maintained primarily by its creator.
Pro Intuitive interface
Easy to navigate around and feels very natural in general.
Pro Non-memory consuming
Just like Gogs, but with new features and fixed bugs. Unlike GitLab which is enormous.
Pro Wiki and issues
Like GitHub, a wiki and issues (bugtracking) can be added to a repository.
Pro Fast pace of development
New features, constantly updated.
Pro Like Gogs but with faster bug fixes
If you love Gogs but were frustrated with the long wait for bugs to be fixed, this is for you.
Pro Most common platforms
Versions available for Linux, Mac and Windows. This is possible because Gitea is developed in the Go language which makes it compact and fast too. Only one executable is needed.
Pro Easy install with MariaDB back-end
No problems getting to work with MariaDB.
Pro Simple to install/written in GO
Pro Package Registry
Supports NuGet, npm, Cargo, Composer, Maven, RubyGems etc.
To work with the NuGet package registry, you can use command-line interface tools as well as NuGet features in various IDEs like Visual Studio.
Pro Runs perfect on a Raspberry Pi 3
Thanks to its light-weight and simple integration.
Pro Customizable Templates
All templates can be overridden.
Pro Focus only on key features
And if you want extra features, you can use web hooks.
Cons
Con The web interface is complicated and hard to use
Other project hosts such as GitHub, BitBucket or GitLab have easy, simplistic UIs that help new and experienced developers alike to browse code right through the browser. LaunchPad on the other hand is very weak at this. Most of the projects have poor (if any) documentation and no way to determine a project's worth easily. The fastest way to do so with LaunchPad would be to download the project and look through the code manually, which is quite tiresome.