If you are using Windows XP or newer, your computer has everything required to connect to a Windows computer at the department through Remote Desktop (rdesktop).

Click on the Start button, then All Programs, Accessories and click Remote Desktop Connection.

The following window will pop up. Type the name of the computer you would like to connect to (term.imp.fu-berlin.de in this case) and click Connect.

You will now see the following login window where you should be able to login with your normal login credentials from the Physics department. Don't forget to provide the domain name which is "FU-BERLIN" which can be provided by prepending your username with FU-BERLIN\.

Remote Desktop Viewer is a graphical tool provided by the GNOME Desktop (runs on KDE, MATE, XFCE and so on as well) to allow easy access and management of Remote Desktop connections to a Windows computer.

From your applications menu (here shown on the MATE Desktop), navigate to Internet and choose Remote Desktop Viewer.

The following window should pop up. This is the main screen of Remote Desktop Viewer (here shown is version 3.8.2 as part of GNOME 3.8).

Click Connect and in the following dialog, enter the name of the Windows computer to be connected and your username. If you would to connect in fullscreen mode, tick the checkbox Fullscreen.

Again, click Connect. If the connection was successful, the familiar Windows login screen should appear and you are able to log in.

If the connection was unsuccessful then try connecting using just your username (without the prefix FU-BERLIN\ seen in the screenshot above) and input FU-BERLIN as the Domain if it is requested.

To connect to a Windows computer through Remote Desktop from a Linux computer, you can use the command xfreerdp which is readily available on the Linux computers at the department. If you want to use xfreerdp on your Linux computer at home, you will probably have to install it first through your package manager (sudo apt-get install freerdp-x11 on Ubuntu, for example) or compile it from source (http://www.freerdp.com)

Then run the xfreerdp command like this:

dreger@smart:~> xfreerdp --sec tls --plugin cliprdr -a 16 -g 1024x768 term.imp.fu-berlin.de

The number after the option a specifies the color depth in bits while the two numbers after the g option specify the resolution to be used for the connection. You can change this to any other resolution (e.g. 1200x900). If you want to connect to Windows computer in full screen, use the option f instead, thus:

dreger@smart:~> xfreerdp --sec tls --plugin cliprdr -a 16 -f term.imp.fu-berlin.de

The Windows computer which you want to connect to is the last parameter provided to xfreerdp. In this case, it is term.imp.fu-berlin.de. The option –sec tls enforces an encrypted connection. The cliprdr plugin in necessary in order to make cut'n'paste work between Windows and your local Linux system.

When the connection was successful, you should be prompted with the familiar Windows login screen where you can log in using your credentials from the Physics department. Don't forget to prepend your username with FU-BERLIN\ in order to log in to the domain "FU-BERLIN".

In order to connect to a Windows terminal server from a computer MacOS X, a free application from Microsoft called Remote Desktop Client is required. It can directly be downloaded from Microsofts's website here. More information about the Remote Desktop Client for MacOS is provided on this website.

After downloading, you should have a file called RDC_2.1.1_ALL.dmg in your download folder. Double-click it and the following window should show:

Double-click RDC Installer and follow the instructions on screen to install the software onto your Mac:

You will receive a confirmation once the installation was successful:

To start the software, open Finder and navigate to your Applications folder:

Double-clicking "Remote Desktop Connection" will open the Remote Desktop Connection for Mac application:

Type the name of the Windows computer to connect to, term.imp.fu-berlin.de in this case, and click Connect. You will now be prompted to enter your Windows login credentials for the Physics department. The domain to be used here is FU-BERLIN: