Both of these questions are related to avoiding dependencies from other desktop environments.
I'm using a HP printer on Lubuntu. I installed HPLIP from synaptic without the GUI on my notebook and WITH the GUI on my desktop. I think the GUI is qt-based. Is it recommended to install the GUI when running a non-qt desktop environment like LXDE? Does it provide any additional functionality like a resume-function when the printer runs out of paper?
I've used vpnc on Ubuntu to access university vpn-network. Is it recommended using the same packages on Lubuntu? I think there's a KDE version called kvpnc.