[usrbinbash]

> In both cases, you'll want to have your terminal to be responsive again as soon as possible.

My terminal emulator doesn't become unresponsive just because the renderer cannot keep up. It still processes input, so if I accidentially

    cat some-linux-distro-1of4.iso

...I can still Ctrl-C it and stop the process.

> it doesn't interrupt other applications.

It can't do that anyway in an environment that does preemptive multitasking.