Running /bin/vi (that is, vim-minimal) in an xterm or a gnome-terminal window results in a garbled display. The program is unusable. It does seem to work right in a linux console, though.
Can't reproduce this either (and nobody else reported anything like it). This, too, looks like a misconfiguration or an installation of faulty related packages. (This is probably a duplic of Bug 37465, since both indicate a misconfigured termcap/teriminfo database).