Vim for Debian --------------- 1. The current Debian Vim scripts policy can be found in the vim-doc package under /usr/share/doc/vim and . 2. Before reporting bugs, check if the bug also exists if you run vim with "vim --clean". If not, make sure that the "bug" is not a result of a setting in your ~/.vimrc before reporting it. defaults.vim ------------ Vim provides $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim to improve the default Vim experience for a user with no vimrc file. It enables commonly useful functionality that wasn't historically enabled by default, like syntax highlighting and filetype plugins. However, the defaults.vim script is ONLY loaded when a user does NOT have their own vimrc file. If you create a vimrc file and want to build on top of defaults.vim, add these lines to the top of your vimrc file: unlet! g:skip_defaults_vim source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim When defaults.vim is loaded implicitly for a user, that happens _after_ the system vimrc file has been loaded. Therefore, defaults.vim will override settings in the system vimrc. To change that, one can either a) Explicitly load defaults.vim in the system vimrc, as described above, and then define your customizations b) Explicitly opt out of defaults.vim by adding the line below to the system vimrc let g:skip_defaults_vim = 1 Modeline support disabled by default ------------------------------------ Modelines have historically been a source of security/resource vulnerabilities and are therefore disabled by default in $VIMRUNTIME/debian.vim. You can enable them in ~/.vimrc or /etc/vim/vimrc with "set modeline". In order to mimic Vim's default setting (modelines disabled when root, enabled otherwise), you may instead want to use the following snippet: if $USER != 'root' set modeline else set nomodeline endif The securemodelines script from vim.org (and in the vim-scripts package) may also be of interest as it provides a way to whitelist exactly which options may be set from a modeline.