Execute commands in new window

Hi,
I have a text file that I would like to sort and there's 2 things I
would like to do. First of all I would like to eliminate all duplicate
lines (this is on a linux machine). I tried :%s/\n\n/\n but though it
found the duplicate lines, it replaced it with a weird @ symbol.
Then I would like to sort it (removing duplicates) and send the
output to a new window. I tried the following but with no luck
:new +!sort -u
:new +!sort\ -u
:new +%!sort\ -u
:new +:%!sort\ -u

When I look at the help documents, I'm not quite clear what it means
when it says you can execute a command in a new window with a +cmd. Is
that a vim command, or can I execute bash commands as well?

Thanks,
Ven

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