However, I'd like to use my Chromebook to develop for the ESP8266. Chrome OS does support the CH340 serial chip but there is no Arduino IDE for Chrome OS. Chrome OS does also run Linux in a container so I can run the IDE from there but the container does not have access to the serial port so it occurred to me that perhaps I could upload sketches to a network port. Unfortunately, when I run the IDE in a Linux container it does not recognise the network ports hence my question.
How does the IDE detect new ports? It can see the two OTA devices when I run the IDE on my Linux laptop but not when I run it on Chrome OS in a Linux container when it does not recognise any ports at all. Is there something I can do to prompt the Arduino IDE to search for OTA ports?