JayDot, Longtime PCLinuxOS User & Forum Moderator, Passes On At 80 Years Of Age

This sad news is from a post in the PCLinuxOS forum by Texstar.

JayDot was a PCLinuxOS user and forum moderator for many years. She was a beautiful and kind soul. She has been sick for the past year and her lungs finally gave out. She will be missed by everyone who knew her.

Here is a wonderful tribute from her dear friend Jojo Mehta.

I’m thinking about DEATH and JOY.

One of my oldest and dearest friends, the utterly unique Jan (pictured here in 1999), died a couple of days ago. She had no immediate family (I was her designated next-of-kin), no possessions to speak of, and lived like a hermit in a Kilburn basement which she loved, full of Linux computers, crime novels and small cabinets on wheels (everything was on wheels), with visiting foxes, cats and squirrels – mostly in the garden but not infrequently in the house.

She smoked like a chimney most of her life (yes, her lungs gave up in the end) but was otherwise healthy and sharp as a tack, right up until she departed last Friday (July 17, 2026). She asked me to remind her how old she was (80) and told the hospital doctors: “Had enough now. I’m off soon.” And she was.

We met at a book stall when I was 12. Over the decades, she met all my family and close friends. She vetted - but never vetoed - my boyfriends (she was a big believer in making one’s own mistakes and completely avoiding taking responsibility for anyone else’s), and engaged everyone – especially kids – as equals and fellow investigators of the world.

She was a fabulous conversationalist, master of the much underrated art of curiosity, of following intriguing tangents – an excellent tonic for the mind and one that caused me to miss many a train home as a teenager.

She was bed-bound for at least a year before she died (yes, the lungs). She would watch the tall lime trees at the bottom of her rewilded-by-default garden change with the seasons and drop their leaves, and the fox-cubs play in the undergrowth.

She also spent endless hours on the internet watching kung-fu movies and stand-up comedy, podcasts and how-to videos about anything and everything. When I turned up and let myself in, she would yell delightedly down the corridor: “Hello my darling girl!”

Jan lived on next to nothing. But when, with another dear friend (the remarkable Polly Higgins, 1968-2019), I started what is now Stop Ecocide International, she threw in a couple of grand to our seed fund, just because she believed in me.

To me, she was London’s best-kept secret, woven into my life like a – well, not so much a fairy godmother, more a kind of joyful, nerdy elf.

I’m posting this because I feel like everyone should have a Jan.

Mischievous, eccentric, generous, sparklingly intelligent, always interested, never precious. Someone perceived by the system as a little crazy, who brilliantly demonstrates that it’s actually the other way around.

So here she is.