Installing Gnuplot 5.0 on Ubuntu

Getting started with gnuplot in Ubuntu environment

You have to launch gnuplot first (type gnuplot and press enter), and then when you're in give the command (in your case plot sin(x)). This is what you should see on the terminal:

~$ gnuplot

G N U P L O T
Version 4.6 patchlevel 0    last modified 2012-03-04 
Build System: Linux x86_64

Copyright (C) 1986-1993, 1998, 2004, 2007-2012
Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley and many others

gnuplot home:     http://www.gnuplot.info
faq, bugs, etc:   type "help FAQ"
immediate help:   type "help"  (plot window: hit 'h')

Terminal type set to 'wxt'
gnuplot> plot sin(x)

How to install GnuPlot on windows?

You don't have to install MinGW or Cygwin. Actually packages compiled in MinGW are compatible with Windows. Just download the binary of gnuplot from Their repo and you are good to go.

Additional points:

• When installing, check which terminals you want to set up; also
  check if you want the installer to add the PATH variable to your
  system. Also, create a desktop shortcut.
• After installation, you should see the desktop shortcut. Clicking on it should open a terminal-based gnuplot (which hopefully you are familiar with).

Please note that I have used the x11 terminal (you can get this working by installing xming). There are other options such as windows and qt terminals, but I am not an expert on using these.

Why doesn't gnuplot 4.6 plot window have featues of Gnuplot 4.4?

The gnuplot 4.6 that comes with the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories looks OK with the default terminal, which is wxt:

Now, I'm suspecting that you met the same problem as me before I upgraded Ubuntu and you installed gnuplot 4.6 from source on Ubuntu 12.04, whose repositories come with gnuplot 4.4. When you install from source you might experience the lack of some terminals, in particular wxt. I do not know the details behind this issue, but I'm guessing some libraries needed for those terminals are somehow not available in Ubuntu 12.04.

For what it's worth, at least the epslatex terminal, which is the one I normally use on a non upgraded machine, seems to work flawlessly even when installing gnuplot 4.6 from source on Ubuntu 12.04.

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