USB-Blaster under Linux?

It does work. Here are the instructions, that I followed:

To use USB-Blaster under Linux you need to set up the permissions correctly. On redhat you need to add the following lines to /etc/hotplug/usb.usermap - on Debian create a file /etc/hotplug/usb/usbblaster.usermap and copy the lines into it.
# #  Altera USB-Blaster# 
usbblaster 0x03 0x09fb 0x6001 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0
usbblaster 0x03 0x09fb 0x6002 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0
usbblaster 0x03 0x09fb 0x6003 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0
And then add the following script as /etc/hotplug/usb/usbblaster:
# !/bin/sh
#  USB-Blaster hotplug script.
#  Allow any user to access the cable
chmod 666 $DEVICE
Don't forget to make the script executable.
This should set up your USB-Blaster so that any user can access it.
You may of course care about security, in which case you would put more careful rules into the script, for example you could set the files to mode 660 and set the group to a group of users who should be allowed to use it.
Now plug in and go...
(If you plugged in before making these changes then the permissions will still be wrong - you'll need to unplug and replug your USB-Blaster).