I'm sorry that my post was incorrect. I found another post that specifically mentioned your device being in the default kernel for a while. The link that I gave was instructions on how to test if indeed the kernel recognized your device. If it does it is redundant to install another driver. If it is not in the kernel, then a package request would be the next step. Installing anything outside the repos, rarely works and is unsupported. This doesn't mean that noone will try to help, just that there is often situations that can't be solved without a common starting point.
According to the information in the link, the first step is:
su <enter password>
cat /proc/bus/usb/devicesThen, if the output shows that kernel recognizes the device but doesn't activate it, use the information from the previous command to install the module:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0×1001
This is not necessarily the best way to find and solve this issue, but it is where I would start.
Galen