We received a follow-up from John V. Matthews, the author of the script for Linux Unreal Tournament operators posted yesterday (story) to clarify the script's true purpose, which was not accurate as first written (though it turns out it can be used for that purpose as well). Here's the dope:

As the author of the bash script (for UT Linux + Unreal) you mentioned on your page, I think I should clarify what the script does. I was curious if, as had been mentioned before the release of UT, Unreal maps could indeed be played with UT. Yes, you can play the DM maps that came with Unreal and my script allows Linux users to set up symbolic links from their UnrealTournament/Maps directory to a mounted Unreal CD-ROM, thus allowing them to play the original Unreal maps without actually installing them on their hard drive. The links are named such that the new maps will show up in UT's in-game map browser.

While this trick could be modified to work with all of UT maps themselves (so that the UT maps need not be stored on the hard drive but remain on the UT CD), that's not what my script is for and I thought I should point it out.