Comment by Tor3

I use ssh -X all the time (actually I have -X permanently enabled so it's always there - for the targets where I want to use it). However, if there's any combination of latency and heavy X traffic (which can be found in surprising places), ssh doesn't cut it. Then a VNC is necessary. The difference can be as much as ten minutes of waiting for the GUI to come up, or nearly instantly if I have a VNC running.