Mostly Harmless

Matlab can be operated in non-GUI mode. To start matlab:

matlab -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash

If you wish to plot graphs without using X or GUI, open a figure with visibility hidden, plot the graph and then print the figure to a file.

>> h = figure('Visible', 'off')
h =

     1

figure returns a handle to figure. Now issue the plot command.

plot(1:4,5:8)

The figure can now be saved using the print command.

print -f1 -dps 'filename.ps'

The syntax for the print command is
print -fhandle -ddevice.
In our case, the handle is 1 and device is post script file.

Update: As posted by anonymous, another option is to use

saveas(h,'file.png');