By using your own version of vim you can:
1. know this is your vim and wanted feature is always there.

Most vim users don't need this.  Every distro that I know of has a
package for a "huge" vim version with every applicable feature
included (archlinux may be the exception here - I don't think that
they have a package that provides a "vim" binary with gui features,
only a "gvim" binary).  Your wanted feature will be there as long as
you install a package that includes it, which is much easier and less
time consuming than compiling from source.

Do you really need the Huge version just for an Editor? Do you think "most users should install features they may never need in their life?".

Yes they have the freedom to install unnecessary stuffs, but this is another story.

What I need is a vim compiled with *everything default*, i.e. a Normal version with gui support. But nobody seems to provide it. They either provide a Tiny version or provide a Huge version.

There always have been newbie questions in linux forums asking why his vi does not have some feature, the reason is they've got the Tiny version or even not the vim. When I tell them to "install vim" they would claim that "they already got vim and the vim command works, why should they install vim?", and from time to time you may waste your time explaining why this vim is different from that vim, then you again need to teach them how to find the package-name of vim in their distribution, and then you need to tell them how to use their distribution's package manager... oops, Telling them to download vim source and make install vim is the best way so far, since this solves almost all problems of this kind.

There are other issues for distribution specific vim, e.g. the directory. They put system-wide vimrc in different directories, which you may not know, because each distribution maintainer has different preference. If you compile your own vim you know vim always lies in your /usr/local/share/vim and you're more helpful to yourself and for those who want to help.

For advanced user like Matt, well, may have no difficulties identifying distribution-specific vim directories.

For many average people, if you go to ask "where is your vim installed?" they may never give you the correct answer unless they're compiling themselves. How could you help if you don't even know what version of vim they may have and where is it?

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