FYI: I solved this problem. I copied ~/vimrc~ to ~/.vimrc and it worked.
This is driving me a little nuts here. I'm a recent convert to Suse 8.2 from Redhat 9.0 I upgraded VIM from the default to 6.2
I followed the tutorial (sort of) to have syntax highlights enabled by default. In the tutorial program, it says you need to do :edit ~/.vimrc (this file doesn't exist -- only vimrc I had was /etc/vimrc owned by root -- changed it to 0777 and tried it anyway) :read $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim :write
I did all of the above, except the vimrc file I edited was the aforementioned /etc/vimrc I did it as root first, as /etc/vimrc was owned by root. When I'm root, it works. I changed back to me, and tried the exact same thing, and syntax is not on by default. Also, I do not have a ~/.vimrc file, but I do have a ~/vimrc~ I checked the ~/vimrc~ file and it does have syntax set to on if terminal has color.
I'm not running the GUI version, but my xterm should have color, although I have no clue how to check. When I do :syntax on it works fine.
Any chance when I run VIM I'm invoking some hidding vimrc file?
Thanks Paul