The application apt-get on Linux does scale its output dependent of the size of the terminal but I have noticed that there are differences if I'm calling apt-get directly or with a subprocess without shell and creationflags set (so that creationflags should be 0). From the documentation subprocess.CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE is not set so that apt-get does inherit the console and normally I would assume that this counts also for all attributes. In the attachments is a testcase for this issue. Also here are 2 screenshots to compare the results: Direct call: http://picload.org/image/crlrapg/normal.png Subprocess: http://picload.org/image/crlrapd/subprocess.png