I banged my head against the wall quite a few times trying to fix the ugly font issue in Google Chrome on Linux. I’m running openSUSE Leap and no hack with the chrome://flags or advanced font settings helped fix the font rendering issues.

Until today…

The best fix that I could find is to place a configuration file that instructs Fontconfig to disable hinting but to keep antialias on.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign"><const>hintnone</const></edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
   <edit mode="assign" name="hinting"><bool>false</bool></edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Drop the above in ~/.fonts.config and let Fontconfig do its magic. Google Chrome should now behave better with regards to font rendering.