That is a far, far cry from using kinetic scrolling. In fact, using a mouse wheel is a very far experience away from that. I basically cannot use "normal" mouse

That is a far, far cry from using kinetic scrolling. In fact, using a mouse wheel is a very far experience away from that. I basically cannot use "normal" mouses with scroll wheel anymore for that reason, I couldn't get anything done like that. I think there are/used to be some mice with a ultra-low-fricton "freerunning" scroll wheel. I guess that could be a similar experience, but of course tmux would stand in the way of that as well. And I'm very old school and had been using text-only terminal starting in the 1980s...