What is the opt folder in my hard drive?

What is the opt folder used for in my hard drive? All I know it has some files for GIMP and gutenprint.
Should I leave that folder alone?

Many open-source software projects (like gimp) use the /opt folder. If it's not there, they will create it when you install them.
In a standard unix-like operating system (and darwin, the unix-like foundation of mac os x is no different), the core binaries are installed in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin, and core libraries are installed in /usr/lib, and there are specific directories where the system looks for specific types of information... However there are lots of dependencies amongst this core functionality: more than one binary application can use the same library.
If the user decided to install some additional software, (and usually the admin password is needed to do it, right), the user has authorized the installer to do what it needs to do to get the software installed, even if this means updating one of the libraries to the most recent version. In this case, what happens to all the other software already installed that used the old library? Well... what happens, is none of the old programs work anymore.
The workaround has been to create a separate directory for additional software installs, so that the core functionality in /usr won't be threatened. Many software projects created a directory inside /usr called /usr/local in which they install their components. Other projects use the /opt directory. Others use /opt/local.
This is why, in unix-like operating systems, you find repititions of the same folders in other folders (i.e., there is a /usr/bin and a /usr/local/bin and an /opt/bin). The "bin" is a common name for folders that contain binaries (commands and applications that are executable and built for the specific operating system that they are running under), and "lib" is a common name for folders that contain libraries. You can find "bin" and "lib" folders throughout your system.
One downside to this is that additional programs installed into the "opt" directory could interfere with the ones that are already there, and for this reason, some programs will create their own directory all to themselves and install everything they need there, even if most of it is a copy of libraries that are already present somewhere else on the system--space is less and less of an issue in the age of terrabytes.
If you learn make your own binaries by compiling them from source code (way easier than it sounds, as you usually only have to type "./configure" and wait an hour for it to finish, "make", wait another hour, and then "make install"--really that's all there is to it) then you can control which directories the software uses (whether to use /usr, /opt, or to create a new directory entirely) plus you can run lots of cool free software.
So that's what the opt folder on your hard drive is for.

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