Is CKAN the easiest way to mod Kerbal Space Program?

The thing that confuses people: CKAN hides mods that aren't tagged for your exact game version, and plenty of fine ones are only marked for an earlier 1.12.x. In the settings there's a compatible game versions list, tick the other 1.12 releases and a lot more shows up.

yes, it pulls in dependencies for you and tells you when two mods conflict, which is half the pain of modding ksp by hand. where it goes wrong is mixing it with manual installs, it can't track what you dropped into GameData yourself. pick one method. and make a copy of the game folder for modding so the clean install stays untouched.