I have the same problem (on one of my computers). I've figured out that the patcher is actually running, just not showing the gui. strace shows it's in a select loop waiting forever. I don't understand what the problem is. I have two computers, both with ubuntu 9.10 with the ppa, same version of wine. The patcher loads on one only (which happens to be an eeepc and can't actually play). :(
