It essentially creates, udpates and removes symbolic links for the current shared libraries, based on the lib directories present in ld.so.conf. In other words, it'll update and make available the absolute latest shared libs introduced into the system, something the different Linux flavors don't always do. If in doubt, run it for good measure.
http://www.expertslogin.com/general/lin ... libraries/
Where the Gimp's concerned, libcurl isn't gonna matter if *open location* support wasn't compiled.
