Change the default locations of the vimrc and gvimrc files to /etc. echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h echo '#define SYS_GVIMRC_FILE "/etc/gvimrc"' >> src/feature.h Prepare Vim to be compiled: ./configure --prefix=/usr Continue with compiling the package: make Finish installing the package: make install Vim can run in old-fashioned vi mode by creating a symlink, which may be created with the following command: ln -s vim /usr/bin/vi If you plan to install the X Window system on your LFS system, you might want to re-compile Vim after you have installed X. Vim comes with a nice GUI version of the editor which requires X and a few other libraries to be installed. For more information read the Vim documentation.