Failed attempt to install pyserial

[snippsat]

I untarred it.

Use pip or wheel(pip install wheel).

There install doc.
Just pip install pyserial should work.

mint@mint ~ $ pip -V
pip 9.0.1 from /home/mint/.pyenv/versions/3.6.2/lib/python3.6/site-packages (python 3.6)

mint@mint ~ $ pip install pyserial
Collecting pyserial
  Downloading pyserial-3.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (193kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 194kB 1.8MB/s 
Installing collected packages: pyserial
Successfully installed pyserial-3.4

mint@mint ~ $ python
Python 3.6.2 (default, Aug  6 2017, 12:55:04) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import serial
>>> serial.VERSION
'3.4'

Going back to OS default and try Python 2.

mint@mint ~ $ pyenv local system
mint@mint ~ $ pip2 -V
pip 8.1.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

mint@mint ~ $ pip2 install pyserial
Collecting pyserial
  Using cached pyserial-3.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: pyserial
Successfully installed pyserial-3.0.1

mint@mint ~ $ python2
Python 2.7.12 (default, Nov 19 2016, 06:48:10) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import serial
>>> serial.VERSION
'3.4'

As you i have no problems here.