xemacs (from testing) cannot generate a dired listing. To see the problem: xemacs -q C-x d RET this will try to generate a dired listing for the users home dir - hopefully there are some files in it. The result will be a failure message in the echo area: "No file on this line" There is a fix for this: I pulled the xemacs packages from CVS and installed it locally. The problem is not present when I used the CVS package set.
There is already a fix for this in -testing. Please try out the fix posted to bz 504422 and report there if it does not solve the problem for you. Ignore the fact that that bug is closed; that was a mistake on my part.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 504422 ***