Line and column numbers in vim status line

Question

On some of my systems, I can see the line and column at the bottom of the display when using vim, along with an indication of the window's position.

But I'm not able to find a way to make this appear on other systems. This does not seem to be OS level dependent, as the results are different on same-os-level systems. Having said that, these are various levels of Ubuntu from 16.04 to 20.04. The image above is from two systems that are each running 20.04.

I thought this might be some setting in the status line, but it appears that this indicator is separate from the status line. I've copied my /etc/vim/vimrc and my ~/.vimrc files between the systems, with no change at all. Using vim command :set , I cannot see any differences that would cause this.

Can you help me understand what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think this is likely a vi vs vim issue...something like one server is using /bin/vi while the other is using /usr/bin/vim. For me, /bin/vi has no line and column numbers in the status line but /usr/bin/vim does.