Step 1: Create PDF on Server

SSH to your Ubuntu 16.04 server (named connection A) and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install texlive-full
sudo apt install evince       # if no PDF viewer installed yet

This requires about 3.6GB disk space, and fast Internet connection.

To verify the TeX system, create a demo .tex file and convert to pdf:

cat << EOF > demo.tex
\documentclass[UTF8]{ctexart}
\usepackage{fullpage}
\ctexset{section/format=\Large\bfseries}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usepackage{pgf-umlsd}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes.geometric, arrows, positioning}
\tikzstyle{arrow} = [ultra thick, <->, >=stealth]

\usepackage{forest,array}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}

\title{产品概要设计}
\author{张三，李四}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\heiti
\maketitle
\songti
\section{产品需求}
\subsection{业务场景说明}
\subsubsection{典型业务场景}
EOF

xelatex demo.tex

Step 2: View the PDF on Client

On your laptop login to the TeX server via SSH with X server. For Windows you can use MobaXterm which has a built-in X server as the client, while for Linux using ssh -X <tex-server>.

After login via SSH (named connection B), run echo $DISPLAY, you get something like localhost:10.0. So the DISPLAY attached to you client is :10.0.

In connection A, run:DISPLAY=:10.0 evince demo.pdf. A new window displaying the PDF file should appear on your laptop in a few seconds, depending on the file size and LAN speed.

Step 3: Editing with Live Preview

On TeX server, install xuhdev/vim-latex-live-preview plugin for vim by adding the following lines into .vimrc:

" LaTeX Live Preview
let g:livepreview_engine = 'xelatex'
let g:livepreview_previewer = 'evince'
Plug 'xuhdev/vim-latex-live-preview'

And run PlugInstall in vim.

Open the file with: DISPLAY=:10.0 evince demo.pdf, and run :LLPStartPreview in the vim. The PDF window should appear in a few seconds. While you edit the .tex file, the content in the PDF window will change accordingly, without saving the source file.

Preview for subfiles structure

If your document has a main-subfiles structure (see Multi-file LaTeX projects for details):

.
├── images
│   └── fig1.png
├── main.tex
├── README.md
└── sections
    ├── section1.tex
    ├── section2.tex
    ├── section3.tex
    └── section4.tex

Run vi in the project root, and run preview command with :LLPStartPreview main.tex. Now your changes in subfiles will refresh the PDF preview window.