This is a very weird, annoying and bizarre quirk with many distributions, especially Debian.  The home and end keys don't work, but it's a simple fix as long as you found this article :)

You just have to edit /etc/inputrc:

Find the commented lines as shown below:

# "\e[1~": beginning-of-line
# "\e[4~": end-of-line

*If you can't find the above, just copy and paste the code below into your inputrc, it will enable your Home & End keys to work, saving you time so you don't have to keep using the arrow key to edit your commands

Remove the comments :)

 "\e[1~": beginning-of-line
 "\e[4~": end-of-line

Save the file, and now restart your terminal/bash/putty/console session and you'll see the Home and End keys now work instead of producing tilda ~ (in bash you can simply just type "bash" and you'll see the settings will be applied instantly)

I still have not figured out why the Home & End keys in vi produce unwanted/unexpected results, instead of moving the cursor to the Home or End position, it just capitalizes the current letter which is very annoying.