Ok this is going to sound really strange but it appears that Vim has gone whacko on my system... let me say that it works right on every other distro i have tried but for some reason it's almost totally unusable on Slackware 9.1.

it's probably a config error or somethign but here's my issue.

i run vim /etc/fstab (for example)

now... i press the i key... it looks at me like i'm an idiot (the usual [INSERT] doesn;t appear at the bottom.)
i use the arrow keys and it inserts random carriage returns and characters here and there... the backspace key is a great way to make the system beep... all in all... it's useless... you can only do stuff from the command line. What the hell happened to VIM and why is it that Slackware is the only one i have tried that has destroyed it?

Hi kittani!!!

That's odd. It remembers me the good ol' "vi". Maybe you actually have "vi" installed and it's linked to /usr/bin/vim. Try removing the package and installing vim to see if that helps. Go to /var/log/packages and type:

removepkg vim-xxx-xxx-tgz

Then get a new one from their ftp, here:

ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distrib...6.2-i486-1.tgz

and install it:

installpkg vim-6.2-i486-1.tgz

Good luck!

yeah i used to have the same with the vim from slackware 9.0 that was, it was fucked up.. you can't press to much on "i" or it's ruined.. but maybe try pressing the normal 'insert' key.. maybe that responds better? :s

I've decided to not install vim altogether next time and get the package from red hat... i'll use the rpm2tgz converter to install it... at least i know that vim works.

Well VIM is still screwed up and i installed it from source. The arrow keys display random characters, the backspace key beeps... it doesn;t show insert still... I believe it's the terminal i'm using but the man pages say nothing about how to change it. it's funny because every other distro i have used VIM works perfectly... but for some reason this one's fooked up.

Using VIM 6.3 under bash shell and xterm

i had to remove the package from 9.1 and use the VIM from the current tree... works fine now

fooking wierd