I recently upgraded to Google Chrome 60.0.3112, using the script in Slackware 14.2 /extra. I immediatelly noticed a problem with fonts rendering, which affected not only web sites, but the browser itself. The same problem exists in Alien Bob’s Chromium package, version 60.3112.78.

Very annoying:

I googled around and finally found a discussion about this in Linux Mint’s forum. They say it is a font hinting bug in this particular version of Google Chrome and should be fixed in the upcoming version. Meanwhile, they suggest executing the following command, before starting the browser:

export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35"

To make thins more automated, I opened /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome and added the above line in the beginning, like this:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Copyright (c) 2011 The Chromium Authors. All rights reserved.
# Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style license that can be
# found in the LICENSE file.

# Fix font issues
export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35"

# Let the wrapped binary know that it has been run through the wrapper.
export CHROME_WRAPPER="`readlink -f "$0"`"

HERE="`dirname "$CHROME_WRAPPER"`"

Now, font hinting looks as before:

Phew!