Configuring vi on Ubuntu

With fresh Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) installation my vi editor in INSERT mode behaved like this:

• Arrow Up/Down/Left/Right prints characters A, B, C, D
• Backspace key is not deleting previous characters

 

My ~/.vimrc file contained:

 

$ set nocompatible
$ set backspace=2
 

To remedy this behaviour I had to change this file to:

set nocompatible
set backspace=indent,eol,start

To reload this configuration file and the changes can take effect in the current terminal:

 

$ source  ~/.vimrc