I really like kitty, but I always wonder how people can live without a scrollbar or smooth scrolling in general. Unfortunately that's a dealbreaker for me.
I use tmux in kitty. I rarely have to scroll and when I do, I can certainely do without smooth scrolling. Usually I just use tmux to search and jump through the output.
I was a heavy terminal user already but running macOS at work and linux at home, I got really annoyed by having to memorize different shortcuts. So I just gave up and started using tmux. Now, no matter what platform I am on, the behaviour is pretty much the same. I just use Kitty because it performs really well.
FYI you can configure mouse wheel (or in my case just trackpad) scrolling in tmux [1], I've had this configured for years and it's worked really well for me.
Unfortunately, that breaks scrolling in VIM, which I also use. I do use scrolling with the track pad in VIM sometimes and I care more about that than scrolling in my terminal.
Maybe I should try re-enabling it again. It's been a while. Maybe tmux or VIM fixed this.
I work around the scrollbar issue by having keyboard shortcuts to open the full scrollback in vim, either on top of the current view or in a new tab. I was surprised how little it bothered me, and nowadays I even prefer it. You get all the text control in vim which is so much nicer than the scrollbar approach.
I was a heavy terminal user already but running macOS at work and linux at home, I got really annoyed by having to memorize different shortcuts. So I just gave up and started using tmux. Now, no matter what platform I am on, the behaviour is pretty much the same. I just use Kitty because it performs really well.