Can I configure Bitcoin (Linux) with a custom wallet location?
The bitcoin startup argument -datadir=&lt;dir&gt; allows you to specify a data directory, including the wallet file. 

That'll still require you to pass a custom argument I'm afraid. The config file is also in the data dir, hence there's a chicken-and-the-egg problem that makes it impossible to configure up ahead. Unless you're savvy enough to change the default constant in the source and recompile, which might be okay since you're already running Linux.