My main complain about tmux is that it messes with my terminal emulator scroll buffer. I like to use a mouse to scroll my terminal emulator. For example I can do `cat file` and then scroll around. If file is huge, `less` is better, of course, but for most things terminal scrolling is perfect. But `tmux` and `screen` completely ruin that experience. I know that they have their own scrollbuffer and scroll mode and all that, but I've found that perfect user experience for me is to blend GUI approach and text mode approach instead of replacing it.
I have my tmux set up as you describe, it's easy to do.
In newer versions of tmux, you just add 'set -g mouse on' to your ~/.tmux.conf. I also have copy mode set to use vi keybindings, and I can yank to the system clipboard.
+1. Scrollback used to be one of my gripes as well, but it now works well under tmux.
I like to have a single key binding to toggle mouse on/off, so I found a clever (although hacky) way reading someone's .tmux.conf, and have used it ever since:
# toggle mouse
bind m run "cut -c3- ~/.tmux.conf | sh -s toggle_mouse"
# toggle_mouse() {
# old=$(tmux show -g -w | grep mode-mouse | cut -d' ' -f2)
# new=""
#
# if [ "$old" = "on" ] ; then
# new="off"
# else
# new="on"
# fi
#
# tmux set -g mode-mouse $new \;\
# set -g mouse-resize-pane $new \;\
# set -g mouse-select-pane $new \;\
# set -g mouse-select-window $new \;\
# display "mouse: $new"
# }
