If you installed your TeX distribution via apt
/apt-get
, then you can get biblatex
by installing the package texlive-bibtex-extra
sudo apt-get install texlive-bibtex-extra
LaTeX packages are usually available in the apt
repositories not separately, but grouped into collections. biblatex
is contained in the bibtex-extra
collection.
You can find out which collection contains a package you are looking for by searching for the .sty
file in the package contents: https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?mode=filename&suite=focal§ion=all&arch=any&keywords=biblatex.sty&searchon=contents or https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=focal&arch=any&mode=filename&searchon=contents&keywords=biblatex - obviously you have to pick the right Ubuntu version, I chose Ubuntu 20.04 LTS [Focal Fossa] in the example.
Note that the TeX distribution you get from apt
/apt-get
on Ubuntu (and similarly for other Linux distributions) is usually frozen and does not receive any updates. After a while, those distributions can get outdated, especially on LTS releases.
For example Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) has a TeX live 2019 packaged in February 2020. The current TeX live is TeX live 2021, which receives daily updates. So you would be about 18months behind current development.
People who want to receive bug fixes in TeX packages and who want to benefit from current development are usually advised to install "vanilla" TeX live from TUG.org: How to install "vanilla" TeXLive on Debian or Ubuntu?.
With a vanilla TeX live, you'd install biblatex
via tlmgr
tlmgr install biblatex
(or sudo tlmgr
if you need super user rights to run tlmgr
).