In Memory of Kent “kentnl” Fredric

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Rest in peace

nevelis · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2021 Posts: 1

I met him in high school. Including myself, there were maybe 4 people who were as enthusiastic and as into programming as we were. Programming, computing and tech was all we talked about. We were doing an all-nighter at our mentors house when we were 16 when he exclaimed "oh wow, they took it". One of his first open-source contributions was accepted - he had trouble with a boot loader on his setup, and after a few hours of hacking away he got it going and decided to make a patch for it. A few hours later, the maintainers accepted it. It was nearly 3 in the morning our time, and we sat there bewildered as it slowly sunk in that code that he wrote would soon exist on millions of devices.

Eventually we had fairly decent computers at high school, but only during class time. The ones we had free access to were shitty Acorn computers that weren't very powerful. I saw Kent do dual monitors before anyone else - but he was using dual machines... He disabled the GUI on one to reserve everything for compute and was hacking away on the other as a terminal.

The four of us managed to finish our computing classes a year early at school. I stayed at high school and did a few university papers via correspondence, but he & the other two went straight to the community college. This is where we had our first LAN parties. We played magic between to give our eyes a break but even when we were having a break or gaming, Kent was glued to his screen with 27 terminals open (he actually wrote a script to monitor his concurrent bash sessions, BEFORE he started using tmux).

He was dry, sarcastic, incredibly witty, he did not give a fuck what anybody thought about his opinion and was never afraid to share it. Unlike every other nerd I've ever known though, there was never any dick-measuring, any comparisons, he just didn't care to compare himself against anybody. When he submitted his first open-source contribution, I was learning Debian and he was just getting into Gentoo. But unlike every other Linux user at the college (who followed the mantra of "If you don't use my distribution then BURN IN HELL, YOU HERETIC"), he was actually helpful. He knew every package to install even regular expressions off the top of his head to fix up steps that didn't work.

This absolutely sucks. I'm so gutted. Both of us avid Devin Townsend & Tool fans, we had been waiting a decade for Fear Inoculum to come out, oh man... You just posted how it was over a year since Fear Inoculum had come out and then you left Facebook in September of 2020, and that was the last I heard from you. I wish I had said more to you man. Tell your friends and loved ones what they mean to you before you don't have that opportunity anymore. Rest in peace, my friend. Long before your time.

^D

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 723 Location: /home

teika · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 6:22 am Post subject:

aceforever · n00b Joined: 16 Feb 2017 Posts: 2

RIP !

nikolis · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2003 Posts: 198 Location: Athens

Rad · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 7:15 pm Post subject:

I am hearing these news late, but my sympathies too. He is missed.

drizzt · Guru Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 428

Requiescat in pace
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People don't have to earn my respect. I offer my respect to them, but be careful to lose my respect...

feismo · n00b Joined: 10 Nov 2020 Posts: 1

Sit tibi terra levis, Kent , miss you

Zucca · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:26 am Post subject:

nevelis, thank you for putting time to tell your story.
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..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
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gabrielg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Nov 2012 Posts: 134

This sucks! Was just looking for something different in gentoo.org when I bumped into this - it seems like yesterday when kent\n popped up in #gentoo to give a fantastic helping hand, and at least made me laugh with his witty comments.
Rest in peace, thy will be missed.

lorschy · Apprentice Joined: 16 Jul 2002 Posts: 191

Yczo · Apprentice Joined: 09 Jul 2011 Posts: 225

From these lines I want to express my deepest condolences and my gratitude to his work; thanks to him and the other members, the computer world is better today. :-(

Endermen1094 · n00b Joined: 16 Apr 2021 Posts: 3

You will be missed even if i never interacted with you
You were a good persion in life and that yoy may be remembered

ManDay · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 247

I wish I could just upvote. I didn't know kent personally but sometimes met him on IRC where he helped. He did good. I'm sad to hear he had to go too early. My condolences to his family.

Sipos · Posted: Mon May 10, 2021 9:13 am Post subject:

Rest in peace.

I never knew you personally, but I am indeted to you for your work and grateful for it. Your work survives you, and is something that matters and helps a lot of us. Thanks.

virtualwolf · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2021 Posts: 2