On 15 Mar 2017, at 11:03, Nick Downing <downing.nick@gmail.com> wrote:

I realized after writing that I was being slightly unfair since one valid use case that DOES work correctly is something like:
ssh -X <some host> <command that uses X>
This is occasionally handy, although the best use case I can think of is running a browser on some internet-facing machine so as to temporarily change your IP address

I think you live in a strange alternative world, or (more likely) I do. My world is better however. In my world I have a machine on my desk which runs an X server (which currently is talking to the physical screen, but will I hope soon be some kind of VNC so I can push this display to wherever I need it). I also use a large number of machines which don't have any kind of screen and on which I may want to run graphical tools.

In my experience this is what researchy type places with large-scale computing requirements have looked like essentially for ever, and it's the environment X was designed for (well, probably it was actually designed for student access at MIT but it very quickly moved into these environments). And it works *really* well, and anything which replaces it needs to work at least as well.