Using serial ports from Linux is easy and robust. Serial ports work in WINE as well. PuTTY has GUI configuration for serial ports.

apt install putty

Minicom or screen are less user-friendly in my opinion.

Regardless of which serial port program is used, add the user to the “dialout” group for non-root access to serial ports (one-time)

adduser $(whoami) dialout

Then logout and login.

PuTTY serial ports

Here’s an example PuTTY configuration for a 115200 baud serial port device.

Notes

• PuTTY for Windows get 64-bit MSI
• PuTTY for Mac OS: brew install putty

Find serial ports

• list hardware serial ports (motherboard or PCI card)

  apt install setserial
  
  setserial -g /dev/ttyS* | grep -v unknown

• list the USB-serial adapter ports

  ls /dev/ttyUSB*