Hyper terminal for linux

For people that manage hardware devices such as storage, routers and many more using Microsoft Windows, the term hyper terminal is a familiar thing. They use hyper terminal to connect to all the devices mentioned above using serial cable. But what if you have to manage all those devices using linux?

The answer is, linux has 2 alternatives to hyper terminal; one is command line based and the other is GUI based. Let me start with the command line tool first. It is called minicom. You can install this tool using package manager of your linux machine. In fedora/redhat/centos:

# yum install minicom

Running it for the first time requires you to do some settings by running below command as root:

# minicom -s

Picture below shows the screen after command minicom -s


This is where you set the baudrate, serial device you want to use etc. After finish with the setting, save it so that you do not have to do it every time. You can save it to default .dfl file, with the name of .minirc.dfl in your home folder, or you can specify the name and location yourselves. To change the saved setting, just use the above command back.

The second tool is called cutecom, a graphical serial terminal. To install it on fedora,centos or redhat:

# yum install cutecom

It is easier to use since it has GUI. Picture below shows cutecom main screen, where you can set your device, parity, baudrate etc.