Hehe, JOY!
One suggestion for next time: Put your Linux installation across multiple partitions / drives. Your home folder especially should have its own place, so that way you can keep a rather small partition for the root directory stuff that shouldn't be disturbed (the kernel, /boot, etc.).
Resizing your home partition is quite painless and unlikely to create disasters like the above, especially when it can be done without restarting.
Just put a backup of the current home folder somewhere, delete the contents of the old one, then change /etc/fstab to mount your home partition on /home. Restart, or just mount with the mount command to mount the new home partition, then just copy your backup into the freshly mounted /home. It's quite seamless; this computer has been doing it for over a year now across many major updates.
Of course, while it is wonderfully seamless, don't forget that it happens. I nearly had a heart-attack when an update reconfigured my fstab and lost that setting! (My own fault for running a development version).
If you feel really adventurous, it's possible to get a separate partition for most of those root directories, and it really does make things easier until you have to reinstall.
One suggestion for next time: Put your Linux installation across multiple partitions / drives. Your home folder especially should have its own place, so that way you can keep a rather small partition for the root directory stuff that shouldn't be disturbed (the kernel, /boot, etc.).
Resizing your home partition is quite painless and unlikely to create disasters like the above, especially when it can be done without restarting.
Just put a backup of the current home folder somewhere, delete the contents of the old one, then change /etc/fstab to mount your home partition on /home. Restart, or just mount with the mount command to mount the new home partition, then just copy your backup into the freshly mounted /home. It's quite seamless; this computer has been doing it for over a year now across many major updates.
Of course, while it is wonderfully seamless, don't forget that it happens. I nearly had a heart-attack when an update reconfigured my fstab and lost that setting! (My own fault for running a development version).
If you feel really adventurous, it's possible to get a separate partition for most of those root directories, and it really does make things easier until you have to reinstall.