Hello-
I have a software with a known bug which has a fix in the FAQ.
The fix says to write the following shell script and the bug is fixed.
I entered the following (as shown in FAQ) into my terminal and viola bug is gone.

#!/bin/sh
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
/usr/bin/eagle

But what exactly did I do?
I am not clueless about programming but I am clueless about this....would love to hear detailed answers and perhaps links to where I can learn this better.
Thank you,
Nora

"export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1" sets a shell variable before launching the program. A shell variable is a kind of environment setting. I'm not sure what this one is exactly, but I assume that when your program runs, it checks the variable in order to configure itself correctly.

The variable will only exist for as long as the process runs, and will be erased when the process terminates. There are ways to make shell variables permanent instead of using a launcher script like this, but since this one is only used by that one program, this way should suffice.

Edit: some google hits show that setting XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS can help with a variety of programs, such as flashplayer, having trouble when compositing is enabled. Since it says "XLIB", it must be related to xorg.

By adding the line
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
directly to your .bashrc file, you would have the parameter always set when you log into your account or open a shell console. Then you could run your eagle application right away.