Wanted to hook up my ESP8266 boards to a Graperain USB port and do some IoT magic, but realized it wasn't that straightforward. Most of the boards are using the CH340 chip today, and driver is required.
I scavenged the internet for good solutions, but failed to find anything reliable, up-to-date and easy to consume. Scratching my own itch - I have compiled the CH340 UART kernel driver and now am able to both interact with my ESP8266 boards as a regular serial as well as program the firmware directly from Graperain! (I use PlatformIO for a cross-platform toolset, but any method will work).