The default install of VI is very basic, and being as I spend a lot of my time in there I find syntax highlighting invaluable, to get this however you will need the vim-enhanced package.

So run the following to install this package and setup an alias for vi.

yum install vim-enhanced
echo "alias vi='/usr/bin/vim'" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "syntax on" >> ~/.vimrc
alias vi='/usr/bin/vim'

And you’re done: