nRF8001 DevKit usage with FPGA and Embedded Linux
The NRF8001 has an SPI interface which people routinely use with ATmega32U8 based Arduino boards running open source firmware.

Therefore, you certainly don't need the dongle or any particular host operating system to ultimately utilize it.  Talking SPI is quite natural for FPGA designs, with or without a soft core processor inside.

It is possible though, that some setup or demo tools might need a particular host system if you chose to utilize those.  But you probably will not need them; or at most, could run them once in a VM to generate any special configuration file you might need, and then export it for continued use in your chosen system.