I had tired to use minicom because of some complex and configuration, redundant modem features, damaged screen, and sometimes locking issues. I had wanted to wrote my own simple terminal emulator. Finally a friend of mine suggested me picocom. It is great substitute for minicom. It is small, durable and simple. picocom makes only what is need to do and makes it good. It works friendly with terminal window, easy configurable from command line, and included in popular distributions.
Install: " sudo apt-get install picocom" or "yum install picocom"
Usage: picocom /dev/ttyS0 --b 115200 -l
You may add alias to your ~/.bashrc file:
alias picocom='picocom /dev/ttyS0 --b 115200 -l'
Exit: ^a ^x