Hyperterminal Equivalent in Linux to communicate with other device

I am using minicom (like hyperterminal in windows) on my Ubuntu 11.10

Step 1  install minicom (easy go ubuntu software center and search minicom) install minicom.

Step 2 Connect your serial port to the other device to whom you want to communicate.

Step 3   on command line type
                    $dmesg |grep tty
Output : [    0.000000] console [tty0] enabled
 and output also consist of other devices connected to the ports of your computer

the output of the above command will show that on which specific port you are connected with the other device, if it is not able to show the port in the output that means your machine is not able to detect the other device. 

if it is showing the connected port then it's fine.

Step 4 Now on command line type
                     $minicom
and the minicom terminal will appear here you can set the properties of the specific port that is connected to the device (to whom you want to communicate) properties like baud rate, parity bits, stopping bits and etc.
According to the connected device support for example how much baud rate it can support upto, we will set those properties for the communication.

Hence this is at one side, i mean you have configured @ PC side port for the communication with the other device. But still if you want to test that whether or whatever you are sending on the port is able to go onto the other device, for this you have to write program on other device (consider other device is some micro controller) will do some processing on the data received from the sender, and can again send processed data to the PC and we can see the output on the terminal.