Installing and navigating through enough of the VS interface (what is a "Project"? Why are there so many different types? Doesn't the book say I just need a tex

Installing and navigating through enough of the VS interface (what is a "Project"? Why are there so many different types? Doesn't the book say I just need a text file???) to even get started in Windows is a huge challenge. The original reason I wanted to use Linux was precisely that "make a text file and run a command" appeared simple enough I could understand all the moving parts.