Why vim is changing first letter to g after opening a file

Question

When I open a file, eg vim .bashrc, vim opens the file and change the first letter to g. What I see is the following:

g To the extent p         


        

Answer 1

I am using vim on Ubuntu Linux 16.04 via MobaXterm version 7.7. This is an older version of MobaXterm that supports command-line-settable terminal background colors.

The following change to my .bash_profile solved this problem for me:

# Fix for Vim 8.0 bug that stomps on line 1 char 1:
export TERM=linux

Answer 2

For me, I traced the issue down to the following line:

set nocompatible

It is found in /usr/share/vim/vim74/debian.vim, which is included from /etc/vim/vimrc with the line runtime! debian.vim