midi controllers + laptop

hi,

i can't seem to find any info about using external midi interfaces with linux. i'm using a laptop (dell inspiron 7500, which works very well with linux!) so my soundcard (maestro IIe) doesn't have a midi port on it...i use a number of midi controllers (like the peavey pc1600 fader box) when performing, and i'd love to move some of my software over to linux...

so can i just get a standard midi interface and hook it up to my serial port? i can't find any info at all on this, all i'm finding is "how to play midi files using your soundcard type stuff."

thanks,
douglas