This may sound terse, but I’m just trying to respect your time:

1. You don’t need a server to start using git
2. You don’t need a forge to host a git server (gitweb works fine for indexing, reading, and cloning).
3. If you aren’t publishing anything then just play around locally with an IDE plugin for git or one of the listed GUIs git-scm.com/tools/guis

If you ever do feel like publishing your work, it’s just a git remote add and git push away.