in case Melinda's suggestion (install the pip package instead debian) does not work for you or you definitely want to go the debian way. Seems you do not have python-serial in the apt cache (apt show python-serial as well as apt policy python-serial will throw N: Unable to locate package ... at you). If this is still the case after running $ sudo apt-get update it's for sure in none of the debian repositories which are pointed to in your /etc/apt/sources.list or any of the list files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d. Could be that the standard repos of your distro just dont have this package. From here you could google for a repo that has it and include it in your sources lists or might as well download the debian and install it from the local path you downloaded it to.
i know this should be really really really easy, and my google searches keep
pointing me in circles suggesting that nobody else has had this problem, but
i'm apparently missing something fundamental.
$ python
Python 2.7.18 (default, Mar 8 2021, 13:02:45)
[GCC 9.3.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import serial
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named serial
$ apt install python-serial
E: Unable to locate package python-serial
python3-serial is installed and "import serial" works fine in python3, but the
programs for controlling the robot are made for python2 and i don't know how
hard it will be to port them over:
$ uname -a
Linux wasp 5.4.0-110-generic #124-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 14 19:46:19 UTC 2022
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Linuxmint
Description: Linux Mint 20.3
Release: 20.3
Codename: una
thank you for any help! This is really weird.
-jake
_______________________________________________