Unix Tools

There are a wide variety of Unix command line tools and techniques which are simply not available to average Windows users. These techniques can be extraordinarily powerful. Most involve automating tasks that Windows users do tediously by hand, would buy expensive software to do, or would hire out to someone else who would use UNIX to do them. Windows users often don't realize that computer systems can do such wonderful time saving things.

A few examples:

• The GIMP or ImageMagick can automatically process a large set of images without ANY user interaction. Smooth, sharpen, resize, convert, rotate, or color balance consistently while you drink coffee. This is a major boon to graphics designers, web site designers, or anyone writing reports with graphics.
• Text Processing techniques can reformat your mailing lists, fix your database, automatically write your computer code, or create your web pages for you.
• Unix mail filters and command line "mail" programs can block spam, forward emails automatically, manage mailing lists, and notify you when your automated systems crash, all without clogging your in-box.
• Apache can serve your web pages for you like it does 90% of the rest of the Internet.

Besides a plethora of out of the box tools for automation, and a highly reliable architecture, there are UNIX specific techniques for programming which are powerful and integrate well. Go to The Art of Unix Programming for Eric Raymond's opinions on what makes UNIX programming techniques so powerful.