In Yosemite, Initially, I had quartz and gunplat 5.0.0 installed. However I could not load my x11 window.(everything else was file-X11 was somehow unknown) Here is a workaround that 'worked for me'. Go to the gunplot source folder -$ make clean; make uninstall then in the "configure" file under the following lines \# Standard set of common directories for X headers. \# Check X11 before X11Rn because it is often a symlink to the current release. ---added the location of my X11 files also /opt/X11/include now run ./configure; make ; sudo make install worked perfectly for me as you see below G N U P L O T Version 5.0 patchlevel 0 last modified 2015-01-01 Copyright (C) 1986-1993, 1998, 2004, 2007-2015 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 'x11' hope it helps