Recently I struggled with the same issue with Chrome on Debian (testing) with XFCE. I just added the following code to .fonts.conf file in my home directory:
<?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>That code basically disables hinting and enables antialiasing. Now everything works like a charm.
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