Easiest way to being using linux for astro stuff?

[bugeater (Marty)]

It's been a long time since I tried installing linux on a computer (about 15 years) and fortunately things seem to have gotten easier.

I've put Distro Astro on an old computer with a thumb drive and everything seems to be operating smoothly, but I want to put PHD2 and Eqmod on it as well. This seems less straightforward. Even updating the flash plugin for Firefox was a chore, yet everything seem to indicate things are much easier with Ubuntu (much more click and go). Is this true? Should I just ditch Distro Astro and start again?

I've not even started plugging my gear into the computer, though I am monitoring my laptop running my gear with Teamviewer. That installed okay.

[kens (Ken)]

I'd say the easiest way is probably to install kstars-bleeding on Ubuntu or Kubuntu. It contains kstars, indi and ekos. The autoguider is an adaptation of linguider.
To get an idea of what it can do check out the video tutorials at http://www.indilib.org/about/ekos/video-tutorials.html especially Ekos Complete Astrophotography Tutorial
I'm experimenting with the whole Linux setup for AP though I haven't used it in anger yet. I've got a desktop with Ubuntu 15.10, kstars-bleeding package and PHD2 from https://launchpad.net/~pch/+archive/ubuntu/phd2
I'm used to PHD2 on Windows but I've hard good things about linguider so may well end up changing.
I've also installed Ubuntu Mate on a Raspberry Pi2 along with Indi to connect to the mount and cameras with the desktop controlling everything.