Comment 5 for bug 932472

The workaround presented by Cristiano Nunes still depends on gnome-open and hacks the detect_de function on xdg-open so it treats any window manager as gnome.

xdg-utils_1.1.0~rc1+git20111210 from debian sid fixes the problem with generic window managers, a simple dpkg-rebuildpackage resolved the issue (the original debian package may install without modifications, haven't tested it)