If you might want to investigate virtualization options and possible issues, I’d recomend re-posting to the virtualization forum since your issues sound like they could be specific to the type of virtualization you decide to use (and each might support things like direct hardware access differently).
And that is perhaps the first issue you might want to look at.
Personally, I’ve had mixed results using USB<>RS232 devices, they work and sometimes less so and that is without virtualization. Unless you’re running on a laptop or don’t have any PCI slots, I’d <highly> recommend just geting a PCI serial card (cheapest won’t cost more than $15, maybe only half that) for rock solid serial connectivity without worries. You’ll likely get satisfaction with the cheapest card with a UART you can buy, cost is no indication of performance/reliability and may even be worse if it’s supposed to have unusual features.
Of course, if you install a “real” UART device in your machine, there will be configuration and management aspects you’ll need to configure, it’s a thowback to times before PlugNPlay, auto-sensing and auto-configuration. You may even need to find a copy of HyperTerm to run in your Windows (to “see” what’s happening), Linux tools are not so unusual.
Regardless your USB and/or RS232 hardware, all virtualization support direct hardware access, called a number of different ways like “bypass” - The idea is that instead of virtualized serial drivers (in the case of a serial port) you’re configuring direct hardware access for the Guest. This generally means that Guest will have monopolistic access, the Host and any other Guests won’t be able to see the device once it’s been assigned.
BIOS updates will be released “whenever.” Decide for yourself how you want to manage that. Elsewhere in another thread, I mentioned I maintain a “Windows installed directly on hardware” on my laptop because HP releases BIOS updates which can be run only from within Windows. Sure, someone else mentioned you can extract the Update and attempt to run from a command line, but for a procedure that can turn my machine into a doorstop (AFAIK the BIOS chip is soldered to my systemboard) I’d rather not try to explain that to HP Repair if something goes wrong. And, I don’t know if I would do anything that would prevent applying future BIOS updates, usually there’s goodness in them.
You should strongly consider running openSUSE in both Guests and as the Host if you virtualize. Although LTS OS (like Ubuntu and CentOS) exist, I’ve always felt that distros like openSUSE should often be preferred particularly for “foundation” or simple purpose deployments because we receive and integrate new developments and improvements quicker. I’d probably feel differently if the deployment is particularly complex with greater potential for breakage. Things like what you experienced with your touchpad and mouse are very rare in openSUSE (search our forums to verify for yourself, and note the date of any postings). Don’t start with archlinux unless you’re reasonably advanced. Archlinux requires you to have rather advanced knowledge just to create basic functionality. Installing distros like openSUSE leaves you with a reasonable middle of the road “working” configuration you can further customize.
TSU