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).

To connect to a Windows computer through Remote Desktop (rdesktop) from Linux computer, you can use the command rdesktop which is readily available on the Linux computers at the department. If you want to use rdesktop on your Linux computer at home, you will probably have to install it first through your package manager (sudo apt-get install rdesktop on Ubuntu, for example).

Then run the rdesktop command like this:

glaubitz@z6:~> rdesktop -a16 -g1024x768 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. If you would like to connect to Windows computer in full screen, use the option f instead, thus:

glaubitz@z6:~> rdesktop -a16 -f term.imp.fu-berlin.de

The Windows computer which you want to connect to is the last parameter provided to rdesktop. In this case, it is term.imp.fu-berlin.de.