Prevent Vim from clearing the terminal after exit

Question

If I do:

$ less file

And press q to exit less, I stil see the same text as I had on the screen when less was still running.

However, if I do

$ vim file

And :q, my terminal is blanked...

Screenshots of my terminal after quiting less and vim:

Can I somehow prevent this? This is only on my Linux system. My FreeBSD system actually works as expected (using the same software/settings all around, TERM is xterm-color for both, vim -u NONE doesn't make a difference).

Example of what I would like to have:

Answer 1

By default VIM, when terminating, sends the string configured with the option t_te to the hosting terminal to tell it to clear the screen. To avoid it just :set t_te= to send nothing to the terminal and avoid screen clearing. See :help term form more information about terminal capabilities.

Answer 2

As you are using an xterm you could use its main and alternate screen buffers for screen swapping, as in this section from my .vimrc

if &term == "linux"
    set t_ti=^[[?1049h
    set t_te=^[[?1049l
endif                                                       

Note: ^[ is not literal text, it is the escape character, use Ctrl+v followed by Esc to insert it.

These vim commands add the relevant commands which can be missing from the linux terminfo entry. More info at

:help xterm-screens