http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35119
--- Comment #8 from Matt mattcbro@earthlink.net --- Sorry about that last paste. I got confused about how to transfer the output from the console.
The bottom line is that steam under wine 1.7.8 appears to now work intermittently, whereas on windows it works almost every time as does the native steam client.
The error flags and fixme printouts in both instances are nearly the same, so I'm not certain how much help they will be. Any suggestions as to how to isolate this are fair game; I'm willing to try.
You might pass this off as a steam issue, but please keep in mind the very different experience one has using either the native client or windows.