Got it running on the second try.

1. Installed Steam thru Winetricks.

2. exit Steam.

3. launch the setup.exe from the CD.

4. login to Steam and go thru install.

5. when Steam tries to start skyrimlauncher.exe it will fail. (this means you can't change default resolutions yet)

6. create a startup script called skyrim.sh

#!/bin/sh

cd "/home//.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/common/skyrim"

wine ./TESV.exe

7. chmod 755 skyrim.sh

8. with Steam running in background start the script.

one tip, when you finish creating your character, use the "r" key to save and move on to the next step.
the bottom of my screen was cut off and i had to find this by trial and error.

this is on an Asus G74SX running Ubuntu 11.04



Hope this helps someone.