Purpose

The default installation of VIM imitates vi, lacking many wonderful features.

Bare minimum

This is the bare minimum I want when using vi. The line numbering and syntax highlighting makes such a huge difference in appearance. The following can be typed in:

:set nu ai ts=2 sw=2 et
:syntax on

The same can be saved in .vimrc, in long form:

syntax on

set number              " Line numbers on, always
set autoindent          " always set autoindenting on
set tabstop=2           " spaces to use for tabstops
set shiftwidth=2        " spaces to use for autoindent
set expandtab           " spaces, not tabs

Install

Download and save the [vimrc](https://github.com/lyndell/vi/blob/baremin/vimrc) file to ~/.vimrc.