screwed up vim/gvim on ubuntu royally. how do I go back to square one

Question

I was trying to be super productive and tried to mimic my vim profile to others by grabbing their .vim file from github. However, now vim and gvim are totally screwed up. syntax highlighting doesn't work, snipMate doesn't work and many other things.

How can I go back to square one? How do I completely remove vim and gvim and install from scratch.

sudo aptitude reinstall vim

does not help.

Answer 1

The settings are stored in hidden files (which start with a dot), in your home directory.

Try removing these files:

• ~/.vimrc
• ~/.vim (directory)
• ~/.gvimrc

Answer 2

All you have to do is delete your ~/.vimrc file, and your ~/.vim directory.

Answer 3

Have you tried to (re)move your ~/.vim directory (as well as ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc)? That should take care of a lot of plugin functionality.

You most likely won't need to reinstall vim itself.