xdg-open stopped working

Problem

The default file explorer application used in Ubuntu is Nautilus. To set Nemo as the default file manager I first installed exo-utils:

$ sudo apt-get install exo-utils

Next, I opened the exo-preferred-applications from the shell and in Utilities > File manager section set Nemo as my file manager:

$ exo-preferred-applications

The changes are applied immediately. However, I noticed that xdg-open stopped working. Any application that used it to open files, like Chrome for example, would just open Nemo with that file highlighted.

Solution

It turns out that the problem is exo-utils. It has been filed as a bug.

If you face this problem, remove exo-utils package:

$ sudo apt-get purge exo-utils

Restart and the default behavior of xdg-open should be back.

Note: The right method to set Nemo as default file manager is here.

Tried with: Ubuntu 14.04