Running as a desktop with X11 forwarding

You can even run a complete desktop session through X11, although it isn't particularly
user friendly and VNC will produce better results. To achieve this, you have to use lxsession instead of startx (in the way you would normally start the desktop from the Terminal).

An alternative is to use lxpanel, which provides the program menu bar from which you can start and run programs from the menu as you would on the desktop.