Comment by tpoacher

Don't use tmux. Use a nice wrapper for tmux instead (e.g. like byobu).

Otherwise complaining about tmux and talking about hacky workaround alternatives is a bit like complaining about the internet and advocating for the telegraph as a hacky alternative because you don't like writing your own HTTP requests by hand and morse code is so much simpler.

Having said that, if really all you want is pane splits / window management, lots of terminals have their own solutions for this. Guake is a good one.

disclaimer: I use Guake and still prefer to just use tmux (byobu) from Guake