wine crashing on ubuntu 10.10

solution:

downgrade wine, like so:

1. uninstall the current version of wine
   sudo apt-get remove wine1.3 wine1.3-gecko ttf-symbol-replacement-wine1.3


2. install the older stable version of wine
   sudo apt-get install wine1.2

backstory:

I was recently trying to install steam on ubuntu 10.10 using the latest wine (1.4 something I believe). it kept crashing X windows right as it tried to launch steam.exe, or when I tried to launch it manually. here's the end of the terminal output:

err:wgl:is_extension_supported No OpenGL extensions found, check if your OpenGL setup is correct!
fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0x453d95c, overlapped 0x4353d20): stub
fixme:winsock:WSALookupServiceBeginW (0x453da5c 0x00000ff0 0x453daa4) Stub!
[0525/102859:ERROR:network_change_notifier_win.cc(111)] WSALookupServiceBegin failed with: 8
fixme:toolhelp:CreateToolhelp32Snapshot Unimplemented: heap list snapshot
fixme:toolhelp:Heap32ListFirst : stub
ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:1008:(_snd_pcm_pulse_open) Unknown field handle_underrun
err:winediag:AUDDRV_GetAudioEndpoint PulseAudio "default" -22 without handle_underrun. Audio may hang. Please upgrade to alsa_plugins >= 1.0.24
../../src/xcb_io.c:385: _XAllocID: Assertion `ret != inval_id' failed.
XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0.0"
after 150 requests (144 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

I'm not sure which part of that caused the crash. I googled the third-to-last line, and came across this still unfixed bug that's been in ubuntu for the last four versions (please try to convince me the ubuntu developers care about stability):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libx11/+bug/507062

after I downgraded wine (see solution above), steam installed just fine:
winetricks steam

if, for some reason, you removed the wine PPA or need to install winetricks manually, this should do the trick:

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks
sudo chmod +x winetricks
cd ~