Why is there no i386 binary?

Which Ubuntu release are you running?

What is the output of:

uname -a; lsb_release -a

Thanks

Linux mylaptop 5.15.0-125-generic #135~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Oct 7 13:56:22 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

From what I can tell this is missing in all recent releases. For example, check out oracular: https://packages.ubuntu.com/oracular/gnome-themes-extra. It has binaries for amd64, arm64, s390x, etc., but no i386. I had to go to the debian repositories to get what I needed: https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/gnome-themes-extra

Then why do you want an i686 when you have an x86_64 install on a 64bit CPU? You should use the amd64 one from the Ubuntu repo

It's in the repos so you can install it with:

sudo apt install gnome-themes-extra

No manual downloaded needed.....at all

As I mentioned, I need a 32-bit binary of this to run an older 32-bit application. sudo apt install gnome-themes-extra installs the x86_64 binary. To install the 32-bit binary, it would be sudo apt install gnome-themes-extra:i386, which results in: "Unable to locate package gnome-themes-extra:i386. Look at the links to the ubuntu package search and you'll see that the i386 binary is not there.

Thanks Manfred Hampl, that solved my question.

I'm not thrilled with the situation, but I understand the decision and it explains my issue.