http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13545
--- Comment #9 from Vincent Povirk madewokherd@gmail.com 2008-06-03 10:09:29 --- That probably will take until the next major Ubuntu release, which will probably be around October.
I do get the "need to be root" message. Apparently, there is a start command in Linux that has nothing at all to do with Wine and does require root. You should run your file as: wine start filename