Wine
Wine enables you to run Windows programs under Linux, BSD, Solaris und Mac OS X. This page specifically is about the use of Wine with OpenStreetMap (GPS receivers, mapping software, etc.). See wikipedia:Wine (software) for general info.
If you haven't used Wine before, you'll want to read the introductory sections of the Wine User Guide.
Serial connection
Serial connections are often used to download tracks from a GPS receiver.
To use the serial port under wine you need to map/configure it. Create a symlink named comX in the wine config directory ~/.wine/dosdevices. As the USB serial device names are typically of the form /dev/ttyUSBx, such a system would require creating a symlink like this (command line): ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1
See also: Wine User Guide: Serial & Parallel Ports
For general info about GPS Serial to USB see there.