> You can't have it all with the mouse no matter your settings
I don't think this is correct; it's just that it's not trivial to get things working well. As you say, it depends on using an up-to-date version of tmux (and sadly, you often can't run a config made for a new version with an older version of tmux). And you'll need your terminal to be up to the task (eg. iTerm2 on macOS; not sure what the best thing on Linux would be).
This config shows some useful mouse settings, along with transparent integration with system clipboard via Clipper (even when running tmux on a remote host):
But like I said, getting it all working nicely requires a bit of work, especially if you want things to work uniformly across Vim, tmux and the shell. Once you've got it all working though, it's great. I can scroll with trackpad or mouse wheel inside and outside of Vim, click or drag to select text (and double-click to select words, triple-click to select lines) both inside and outside of Vim, I can drag tmux or Vim splits etc.
Having sad that, I rarely need or want to take my hands off the keyboard when in the terminal nowadays.
I couldnt figure out how to get the mouse behavior I liked working in the shell as well as in editors like less or nano. Id get the shell able to scroll and work well with selecting text, then Id have some archaic mouse behavior in my editors. Or I could have the editors working like they do outside of tmux, but then I lose the ability to scroll in the shell and whole tmux multipane window scrolls off screen instead. I could get into the keybinds, but I dont use vim so they are pretty ancient and foreign to me. The effort for me to learn these binds doesn't seem there compared to just moving my windows with the mouse once or twice a day.
> can scroll with trackpad or mouse wheel inside and outside of Vim, click or drag to select text (and double-click to select words, triple-click to select lines) both inside and outside of Vim, I can drag tmux or Vim splits etc.
Doesn't this kinda defeat the point of Vim? I turned on vim bindings and went through an excruciating learning process just to keep my hands on the keyboard. Moving between keyboard and mouse or trackpad was causing significant wrist issues.
I don't think this is correct; it's just that it's not trivial to get things working well. As you say, it depends on using an up-to-date version of tmux (and sadly, you often can't run a config made for a new version with an older version of tmux). And you'll need your terminal to be up to the task (eg. iTerm2 on macOS; not sure what the best thing on Linux would be).
This config shows some useful mouse settings, along with transparent integration with system clipboard via Clipper (even when running tmux on a remote host):
https://github.com/wincent/wincent/blob/81e4b5dc180dd22d8b47...
But like I said, getting it all working nicely requires a bit of work, especially if you want things to work uniformly across Vim, tmux and the shell. Once you've got it all working though, it's great. I can scroll with trackpad or mouse wheel inside and outside of Vim, click or drag to select text (and double-click to select words, triple-click to select lines) both inside and outside of Vim, I can drag tmux or Vim splits etc.
Having sad that, I rarely need or want to take my hands off the keyboard when in the terminal nowadays.