dfu-programmer is a Device Firmware Update based USB programmer for Atmel chips with a USB bootloader. It seems to be working just fine with the LUFA based DFU Bootloader. (http://www.fourwalledcubicle.com/LUFA.php). You might want to add the following udev rule under /etc/udev/rules.d: SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ACTION=="add",ATTRS{idVendor}=="03eb",ATTRS{idProduct}=="2ff4",GROUP="plugdev" so when you plug the AVR chip to program, the USB devices becomes available to all the members of the "plugdev" group. Also, I found that the programmer doesn't work for non-root users when the "usbfs" is mounted on /proc/bus/usb, so my advice is to remove the "usbfs" entry from /etc/fstab if it is there (or maybe there is a better solution).