Backspace-like behavior

[David Rasmussen]

According to the tutorial I am reading, C-d works like Del works on most 
windows editors, that is, it deletes the character to the right of the 
cursor, and Del works like Backspace usually works:

C-d
    delete-char. Deletes the character to the right of (under, if the 
cursor is a block that covers a character) the cursor.

DEL
    delete-backward-char. Deletes the character to the left of the cursor.


But both the Windows version of emacs that I am using, and the version 
on a Debian box I am connecting to, treats C-d and Del the same way. How 
do I do a normal Backspace, that deletes the character to the left of 
the cursor? Backspace works on the windows version, but not on the 
Debian version that I use via ssh. And according to the tutorial "Emacs 
does not use C-h (aka Backspace) for deletion", so I will have to get 
rid of the Backspace habit.

/David