FreeType and slight hinting + subpixel antialiasing looks great to me, really... Windows has strong pixel-fitting and at the same time softer outlines. That is after using the ClearType tuner to tweak it to my liking. I'm not particularly fond of that look. You talk about hardware. The gamma of your screen makes a difference - antialiasing relies on it. The ClearType tuner has a page or three about that. I guess on Linux you better set your display gamma to the standard value, there is no good reason (except visual impairment or something) to set it to anything else anyway.

By the way, font rendering in Chrome for Linux used to be really awful (no subpixel AA or something). It was fixed a few years ago - it looks like any other app now.

I omitted some detail that you can easily find in your favorite search engine.