Want to use python for remote sensing?

I am new to python. I want use python code to build algorithms for remote sensing applications, which deals with satellite images, format of the images are geotiff,IMG etc. And I am current using windows platform and I want to stick to it, and I know most of programmers don't like windows instead they use ubantu. Please guide me what type of packages I need to perform the task. And please recommend free software. Thank you in advance