Hi, I have a laptop with 3 SSDs set up with Linux and Windows on their own drives and then a storage drive that I use to access files on both OS’
As I have to bounce between Linux and Windows for a couple of work applications, is it possible to move and map the relevant folders so I can use and update things like custom libs and projects from both OS?
I think this is the sort of thing you have to empirically check. Take a copy of one of your projects and libraries and take it through the whole lifecycle alternating the OSes. Things to watch out for: pathnames to system libraries and configuration files that may be in project files (hopefully only via the environment variables), character set in pathnames (hopefully no pathname separators, avoid problematic characters stick to alphanumerics). Stick to UTF-8 encoding throughout. Have a good text editor to view the files.
Naturally we assume the same, up-to-date version on both OSes.
Let us know how you go for future reference.
It should work as long as the OSs don’t do any tricks with the file system.
You have to set up the path variables. It doesn’t matter where the libraries etc. are located physically, and it doesn’t matter if different OSs access them sequentially. KiCad doesn’t know any difference between a shared and non-shared folder. There have been bugs with shared or dropbox/gdrive folders, but that’s another thing. KiCad doesn’t add OS dependent information to its files.
Oh there is one more thing. Linux filenames are case-sensitive, while Windows filenames are in general case-insensitive. (It can be set on a per-directory basis, otherwise WSL would not work. See Case Sensitivity | Microsoft Docs) So stick to a lowercase naming scheme to keep things simple.
Thanks for the help, seems to be working fine just a case of moving and configuring the files in both OS to the shared drive, and yet to run into an issue with the small project that I ran through a whole cycle of editing and exporting Gerbers.
Have projects, custom footprints and libs all accessible and editable on both OS, the only thing I need to do is add the plugins on both and think I’m set. will post if I run into any issues. But, currently running in Windows 10 and Kubuntu 21.10.
(now just need to wait for dark theme support on Windows! 
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