You can see here that my Arduino serial device is on COM4. Add the 'screen' app with sudo apt update' and ' sudo app install screen'. To test this out now, run your new distro from any command line prompt like this.

You can change it to WSL1 with 'wsl -set-version DISTRONAME 1' from any command prompt. NOTE: If you are using WSL2 and have set it as default, run wsl -list -v and ensure that your new distro is using WSL1 as only WSL1 will let us talk to the COM Ports. (I tried Alpine but it still has issues with screen and /dev/null/utmp) Then go to the Windows Store and get any small Linux. If you have Windows 10 you can the Windows Subsystem for Linux quickly with this command at a Admin prompt: dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart I want to do this at a command line, and bonus points if it's in Windows Terminal. This is a Windows app doing serial communication with its own interface wrapping around it.

Here's what it looks like under Arduino's Serial Monitor, for example. I'll use this great little CLI example app for Arduino from Mads Aasvik to simulate such a device. Let's assume this device talks to the COM port as if it were a terminal and it's outputting stuff I want to see. Say I have a small embedded microcontroller device that talks over a COM Port (usually via a USB->COM bridge) like an Arduino. It'll work but it's somewhat old, quirky, and it doesn't integrate well with the Windows Terminal and a more modern workflow. With Windows, however, the historical guidance has always been to use Putty. On Linux you'll use things like 'screen /dev/ttyS0' for COM0.

Folks ask questions like 'How to connect to a serial port as simple as using SSH?' Often when you're doing embedded systems development you'll want to monitor or talk to the COM/Serial Port just like you SSH into remote system. It'll be worth it because you'll be able to have a nice one click menu and drop directly into a serial port terminal on Windows in the Windows Terminal Read this whole post, there's a lot initially but there's really just two or three small pieces. I hope that this blog post is found and helps someone.

Windows terminal serial console