Hasta La Motion!

hi folks, my first post here! I have a question about integrating some linux machines into an otherwise windows based maya setup. For network rendering in windows, I map the directory where maya projects are stored as a network drive on each machine, so they all look in w:\maya for example for textures etc. if i look in the maya ascii files the path is stored as \\hostname\maya etc. rather than w:\

I’m fairly new to linux, but have got as far as mounting a directory in the linux file system under /mnt/maya, however I’m unsure how to get maya to go looking for textures etc here rather than \\hostname\maya etc (as the files are created on a windows machine).
I could open up the maya ascii file in a text editor and do a find and replace to get the paths right for linux but am wondering if there’s an easier way.

Does anyone know if i can get maya files to use a path such as $home/maya and then define $home on each system, so that the same file can be rendered across a network on win/lin machines?