I\'m porting an svn repo to git (using svn2git from https://www.negativetwenty.net/redmine/projects/show/svn2git) and since svn does not track merges, I need to edit .git/in
After playing with different GUI, the behaviour really seems to be tool dependent. Saddly, not many of them are configurable...
I prefer having a tree view of what actually happened compared to an optimized view where everything fits...
I have settled for "gitg" (http://trac.novowork.com/gitg/). Seems relatively active, and it does exactly what I expect from the history view. Master is the left most "lane", branches are forked from it and merged into it from the right. I feel it is consistent with my workflow. Also, I can show "inactive lanes" so master is always shown and on the left-most side (enable/disable in preference window). A nice thing also is the "Show history in topological order". When checked, gitg will try to place commits on a branch together. When unchecked, they will appear in chronological order.
It can also do basic commits and staging.
Only drawback I can find is the search: it seems I cannot enter an sha1sum and find the right commit. Maybe just a bug.
About the original question (can gitk be configured the way I want it?) I'm still not sure it's possible. Probably a design decision...