I switched to tmux a few years ago and never looked back. What is your problem with mouse? I have quite basic tmux config, very basic terminal emulator (st) and enjoy mouse scrolling even in nested tmux scenarios. Selection is done with vim keybindings which is much faster than mouse especially if you scroll and look for something visually.
I can relate to your feelings. In the beginning I was _very_ skeptical about running tmux locally. But very quickly I reconfigured tmux as I felt and stopped noticing at all if I work locally or remotely. Everything is very smooth and pleasant since then.
The only bad thing I remember: default tmux keybindings suck. I just redefined almost everything.
> The only bad thing I remember: default tmux keybindings suck. I just redefined almost everything.
It's true, e.g. ^B / Ctrl+B is a terrible prefix. All of this just makes tmux harder to learn, and less portable/transferrable. But I think there's value in having to feel out the ideal configuration for your workflow - but the prefix is still inexcusable.
Are y'all on Linux/xterm or something? I've had trouble getting this to work in OSX with the default terminal. At one point I got it to partially work by installing some scary looking plugins, but it broke other mouse behavior for me (copy/paste I think).
I'm on OSX and mouse-support. vim bindings, clipboard, and extended scrollback in tmux "Just Works™" in both Terminal.app and iTerm2. The only external software that I had to install separately is reattach-to-user-namespace to get the clipboard working.
The only problem I encountered was really bad kernel panics when the tmux server exits (i.e. last session is closed), but it has been fixed as of tmux 2.1 as far as I can tell.
I'd say give it another try; the problems you were having might no longer be an issue now.
I can relate to your feelings. In the beginning I was _very_ skeptical about running tmux locally. But very quickly I reconfigured tmux as I felt and stopped noticing at all if I work locally or remotely. Everything is very smooth and pleasant since then.
The only bad thing I remember: default tmux keybindings suck. I just redefined almost everything.