On other distros I have run, vim remembers your command history even between sessions; this is especially handy when doing a lot of similar operations on different files.For some reason, it has been flushing in Ubuntu 12.04, and I can't figure out why. Here is my :set info::set--- Options ---  background=dark     helplang=en         history=1000      nomodeline   scroll=27           showmatch           ttyfast  expandtab           hidden              incsearch           ruler      showcmd             softtabstop=4       ttymouse=xterm2  backspace=indent,eol,start  fileencoding=utf-8  fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,default,latin1  printoptions=paper:letter  runtimepath=~/.vim,/var/lib/vim/addons,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles,/usr/share/vim/vim73,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/after,/var/lib/vim/addons/after,~/.vim/after  suffixes=.bak,~,.swp,.o,.info,.aux,.log,.dvi,.bbl,.blg,.brf,.cb,.ind,.idx,.ilg,.inx,.out,.toc
What would cause vim not to retain command history?
vim;command history
Check presence and rights for ~/.viminfo. Usually that's it which keeps command history, file editing positions, etc.One possible case is that this file belongs to root.