Is there a possibility to use the K8101 USB Messageboard with a Linux system?
Most likely yes, however we do not have any experience with this.
I hope that you managed to do something in 2+ years… :o)
With hope to help the next Linux users like me, the PIC on the board is implementing a CDC class of USB device (=Communication device, often used for modems), so when plugged to a Linux or a MacOS X (>=10.8) the kernel is creating a corresponding tty (/dev/ttyACM0 in my case for Linux and /dev/cu.usbmodem for OSX. With Windows and the provided .inf file, it creates a COM port - for me it is COM4). So you can communicate by sending bytes to the tty (classic 9600 bauds 8,1,N) and you can also get button press events.
I have documented the binary protocol used by the board in place of the vendor, and I have implemented a communication wrapper in Perl (I planned another one in Java). You can find the documentation and source code at https://github.com/sebkirche/K8101
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