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I need a GUI on a remote server to which I have an ssh connection. Is it possible to share my X11 window system with it given that there's no X11 installed on the server?

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What do you mean, 'share your X11 window system'? Could you elaborate a little on what you are trying to achieve? – reiche Aug 15 '12 at 6:23
If you have X11 installed on your local box you may try"ssh -X -Y remote-server" and then run gui program. – paul Aug 15 '12 at 6:24
If there is lack of software on server, and you don't want to install new, you might like to make chrooted environment with installed other software, like X. – Grzegorz Wierzowiecki Aug 15 '12 at 9:08
there's no X11 installed on the server and I want to run one application's GUI installer. I've seen once that one could "share" local machine's X11 system with remote server to install the application using local X11 – Sergey Aug 15 '12 at 10:04

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If the remote application is normal, then when it was installed, it would have pulled in all the necessary X11 components for it to run, so when you redirected the display back to your local machine, it would actually be using much of the X11 system on the remote machine.

In your case, in the comments, you mention that this is a GUI installer, so it's expecting to be run on a system which already has X11 installed and it just makes use of it. So if X11 is not installed on the remote system, it will just fail.

Of course, if the GUI installer provides all the necessary X11 libraries itself, then the ssh -X ... should work as it will redirect the display output correctly.

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