http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17662
--- Comment #20 from Mihail Balabin mbalabin@googlemail.com 2009-05-12 10:45:46 --- I've downloaded wine-1.1.21 sources and compiled them: CC=gcc-4.1 ./configure --without-freetype make depend make -j2
Then I've tried to start wine in two ways: "./wine notepad.exe" and "make install && /usr/local/bin/wine notepad.exe". In both cases ~/.wine was created correctly.
I guess, it's possible that binary package is broken. I use binary packages for 64-bit Ubuntu Intrepid from http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/ (see the binary downloads section on winehq.org). It looks like the original bug's reporter used the same packages.