In PCs (non laptops), there is no infrared port, so to use infrared in PCs you can use a dongle. A dongle is a device connected to the serial port that allow you to use infrared from PC.
There are serveral types of dongles. We have used the ACTISYS-IR 220L plus dongle. You can get it from the actisys web page. This model supports perfectly Debian GNU/Linux.