I use mine with PiMAME. I was tinkering around with different distributions so I made a script. You can give it a whirl if you like. Just make it executable and run it using: "./piWii.sh" Use at your own risk. I put some notes in it to try to explain what was going on. They were mostly for me so I could remember what the heck I was thinking since I'm pretty amateur. Read through it if you want.
The script will take a while since it installs a few packages. Once it's done it will ask you to reboot. Once you reboot, you need to run the command "sudo modprobe uinput". Then you can connect a wiimote with the command "wminput -c mame". The "mame" uses the button map that my script created which is for holding it horizontal like a gamepad. You can find all the included button maps in /etc/cwiid/wmiput. You can look through my script to see what buttons I mapped, modify it to fit your needs.
I modified the 0.7.10 menu to initiate a connection when it loads, then I added a menu item to let you initiate it again (if you missed it the first time). The wiimote works in the menu and in the emulators that I've tried.
It should work the same, you'd just have to modify the menu if you wanted to initiate a connection from it . I haven't installed 0.8 yet, I'll try to give it a shot in the next couple of days