Question

How do you set up a .vimrc file on Ubuntu?

This is not helping: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Open_vimrc_file

1. Where do you create it?
2. Whats the format inside?

I know the stuff I want to put in it, just don’t know how.

Answer 1

Where:

On UN*X systems your .vimrc belongs in your home directory. At a terminal, type:

cd $HOME
vim .vimrc

This will change to your home directory and open .vimrc using vim. In vim, add the commands that you know you want to put in, then type :wq to save the file.

Now open vim again. Once in vim you can just type: :scriptnames to print a list of scripts that have been sourced. The full path to your .vimrc should be in that list. As an additional check that your commands have been executed, you can:

• add an echo "MY VIMRC LOADED" command to the .vimrc, and when you run vim again, you should see MY VIMRC LOADED printed in the terminal. Remove the echo command once you’ve verified that your.vimrc is loading.
• set a variable in your .vimrc that you can echo once vim is loaded. In the .vimrc add a line like let myvar="MY VIMRC LOADED". Then once you’ve opened vim type echo myvar in the command line. You should see your message.

The Format:

The format of your .vimrc is that it contains Ex commands: anything that you might type in the vim command-line following :, but in your .vimrc, leave off the :.

You’ve mentioned :set ruler: a .vimrc with only this command looks like:

set ruler

Search for example vimrc and look over the results. This link is a good starting point.