Linux seems universally seen as the platform best suited for programming in general, from my observations. There aren't the arbitrary restrictions from OS features found in Windows or iOS, the filesystem is much more optimized, etc.

It's never been presented to me as anything but something obvious that one should try if one intends to do anything fancy with computers, and the learning curve has always been presented to me as negligible. I've tried a Linux-style shell via Putty and Cygwin, and things did not turn out usefully. Putty I could not figure out at all without a CS professor walking me through it, and I get the strong impression that Cygwin choked on the fact that my Windows username has a space in it and I had no clue how to get around that. It doesn't help that my main uses were compiling C programs and trying to compile Festvox (for making arbitrary Festival-style text-to-speech engines), the former more trivial than the latter. I haven't found it worth looking into learning a new OS without a significant reason, and it didn't turn out well the two times I had reasons (and said reasons that did not last, so I didn't end up making enough of an effort to learn it).

Again, the internet and every computer science department I've encountered insist that Linux is optimized for anything more complicated than HTML or Windows/iOS-specific code, and is definitely worth learning. I expect circumstances will force me to learn it properly, eventually. My experiences so far do not leave me eager, however.

[edit]: D'oh, I think I just repeated everything you said, only longer. :( [/edit]