Hi all,

I'm getting frustrated with vim in Slackware and I would like someone to point me in the right direction.

I've used vim in Redhat for a long time and so when I start using vim in Slackware I find few operations work the way I expect and I run away screaming! I also find that when using vim in Slackware I get different operation when local versus remote over ssh.

One example of a difference between my Redhat experience and my Slackware experience is that when in Insert mode in Redhat I can use the arrow keys to navigate around, use backspace, delete, etc just like pico or notepad. However, with vim in Slackware using the arrow keys, backspace, or delete seem to either bump me out of insert mode or do something equally unexpected.

What I'd like to do is bring my vim experience on Slackware in line with my Redhat knowledge and also get the local and remote access to behave the same way. I assume two config files need to be changed for this to occur; vimrc and something for ssh?

Am I on the right track? Can someone explain why these differences occur?

Thanks for the help,

Electronjunkie

You need a proper .vimrc I think

Try :
cp /usr/share/vim/vim63/vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc

Bless you Keefaz, that did it nicely.

Thanks for the help.

***BUMP***

Instead of creating a new thread, I searched and found this one...

I've copied over the vimrc_example.vim to my home directory, but I don't have .vimrc...and I'm still not getting vim to work correctly.

What do I need to do to get this working ok?

thanks

Did you rename the file to .vimrc? Also, verify the file is owned by the user account.

Didn't realize that I needed to rename the file to .vimrc, thanks!

Odd thing, I don't have a .bashrc under my homedirectory, should this be a problem?

thanks

Yeah, I agree, not entirely obvious to somebody doing that for the first time, but thereafter usually is very obvious!

Depends upon your definition of "problem." See if this helps:

Harmonizing the Bash Startup Scripts

Sweet! Thanks for the help and the URL.

The Linux learning curve in a nutshell!

The road to CLUE has many potholes.

Thanks a lot for that, I was tearing my hair out on vim. Now it's working perfectly

-A

Just for the records, copying that file to /usr/share/vim/vimrc will make it default to all users.