During my attempt at enabling file-sharing within Lubuntu 16.04 32-bit, I did something foolish:

...entered my pw and nothing happened and samba soon errored with the basic ubuntu error message box. I've since learned that the graphical application needed to manage shares is system-config-samba and gksu is needed for that app to start. Now obviously samba is not a 'gui', I'm worried about the file permissions associated with doing something like sudo leafpad '/bla/bla/bla' (when the correct usage is gksu leafpad.)

Btw, I've got the file-sharing now sorted, I'm just wondering about the implications of doing the above.

If you are doing some graphical work or anything else that may leave residue in your home directory, use sudo -H instead of plain sudo. Or use the -i option. Either way, without -H or -i, you will end up with files and or directories owned by root where they should have been owned by your own account. The utility chown will fix things up, but best to act proactively instead.

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For the "next person"
Differences between gksudo/kdesudo, sudo, and su

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Handy link - however, there are distros that insist on policyit, and so don't ship things like gksudo.
Fedora didn't even ship sudo a few releases back although it was in the repos.

I thought I read "mint" somewhere in this post?
Shoulda, coulda, woulda, I reckon.