[ajtaylor]

I tried the mouse integration and turned it back off for the same reason as you. Not having copy-paste at the terminal level is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Learning the vim movement commands better eliminated most needs for the mouse-pointing ability anyway.

[desipenguin]

Same here. But I found a decent workaround.

I have following in my .tmux.conf:

   set -g history-limit 1000
   # See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tmux#Scrolling_issues
   set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

Now I can scroll using "scroll bar" which is acceptable for me. Plus I also get native text-selection.

[moe]

Learning the vim movement commands better eliminated most needs for the mouse-pointing ability anyway.

Sadly not for me. I'm a die-hard vim-user but I can't live without my scroll-wheel in the terminal.