diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index 60aad36f3d..b203912150 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -353,6 +353,12 @@ jobs:
       fail-fast: false
       matrix: ${{fromJson(needs.infrastructure-shard.outputs.matrix)}}
     steps:
+      - name: Free Disk Space (Ubuntu)
+        uses: jlumbroso/free-disk-space@main
+        with:
+          # this might remove tools that are actually needed,
+          # if set to "true" but frees about 6 GB
+          tool-cache: false
       - name: Checkout code
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
       - name: Init Hermit
diff --git a/.github/workflows/smoketest.yml b/.github/workflows/smoketest.yml
index a09b2975f5..b2057b8edd 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/smoketest.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/smoketest.yml
@@ -32,11 +32,7 @@ jobs:
           echo "Latest release: $latest_release"
           echo "LATEST_VERSION=${latest_release#v}" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
       - name: Check out the last tagged release
-        uses: actions/checkout@v4
-        with:
-          ref: v${{ env.LATEST_VERSION }}
-          fetch-depth: 1
-          fetch-tags: true
+        run: git checkout v${{ env.LATEST_VERSION }}
       - name: Init Hermit
         uses: cashapp/activate-hermit@v1
       - name: Build Cache
@@ -56,10 +52,9 @@ jobs:
           echo "Running smoke test on the tagged release images"
           SKIP_KUBE_FULL_DEPLOY=true go test -v -timeout 15m -tags smoketest -run '^Test' ./smoketest
       - name: Check out HEAD of the current branch
-        uses: actions/checkout@v4
-        with:
-          ref: ${{ github.head_ref }}
-          fetch-depth: 1
+        env:
+          HEAD_REF: ${{ github.head_ref }}
+        run: git checkout "$HEAD_REF"
       - name: Init Hermit
         uses: cashapp/activate-hermit@v1
       - name: Build Language Plugins