Midgard CMS switched to a synchronized release model this summer, and the first fruit of it is Midgard 8.09 Ragnaroek, a Long-Term Supported release launched last week:

Ragnaroek LTS is a Long Term Support version of Midgard for which bug fixes and minor feature improvements will be supplied by the Midgard community for several years. It is recommended that all Midgard users upgrade their installations to the Midgard 8.09 series for stability, performance and maintainance reasons. Upgrade from MidCOM 2.8 installations running with PHP5 has been made as seamless as possible.

The version is targeted to ease transition from web services using the deprecated Midgard 1.x APIs to the new Midgard2 architecture. Because of this, the release provides both API versions. This means that the release can be used to run both Midgard 1 applications like the version 2.9 of the MidCOM component framework, and Midgard2 applications like MidCOM3.

This is the easiest Midgard ever to install, thanks to the new datagard database and website setup tool. Binaries are available for many platforms thanks to openSUSE Build Service, making Midgard setup as simple as:

apt-get install midgard-data
datagard
<answer some questions>

And go to your newly created Midgard site, and start creating content. Sweet!

In his blog, Piotras explains more about the importance and long-term strategy related to Midgard 8.09.