I tried different font settings in the font settings and it didn’t improve much (font hinting, anti aliasing, custom DPI settings, different font size)
The font is the default one which is Ubuntu Regular with font size set to 10
Sub pixel order is set properly to RGB Linux Mint xfce
Even when running windows in a virtual machine, the font rendering in it is miles ahead of what I got on my Linux setup!!!
Definitely very subjective. People keep saying macOS has amazing font rendering but for me it just looks like a blurry mess, especially on non-retina displays. My fonts are set to be as sharp as possible on Linux because when coding and in the terminal I want very sharp fonts so they’re easier to read for me.
Seconding the dependence on the particular font as well. Cantarell, Ubuntu and OpenSans are all fairly blurry regardless, unless seen on HiDPI screens in which case they do look more like macOS. DejaVu Sans can be very sharp in contrast at very low resolutions because it’s been made in the 800x600 and 1024x768 days and optimized to look sharp when small.
I gotta highly disagree with the blurry mess comment. To my eye Linux is looking about 90% as good as Mac these days. Mac fonts look the best but that os is worse in a lot of other ways. Windows always has looked worst font wise, though I will say it looks better these days than it used to.
Objectively, Apple is focusing on leveraging high DPI over subpixel tricks.
It makes sense that people who value sharpness on low DPI screens prefer subpixel rendering over grayscale.