É uma dependência tanto do kernel quanto do dpkg, então tenho certeza que estará no ubuntu-minimal.
Para ver os pacotes essenciais, execute isto:
aptitude search '~E'
Você verá algo assim:
i A apt - Advanced front-end for dpkg
i base-files - Debian base system miscellaneous files
i base-passwd - Debian base system master password and group files
i bash - The GNU Bourne Again SHell
i bsdutils - Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite
i coreutils - GNU core utilities
i dash - POSIX-compliant shell
i debianutils - Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian
i A diffutils - File comparison utilities
i dpkg - Debian package management system
i e2fsprogs - ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utilities
i findutils - utilities for finding files--find, xargs
i grep - GNU grep, egrep and fgrep
i gzip - GNU compression utilities
i hostname - utility to set/show the host name or domain name
i login - system login tools
i mount - Tools for mounting and manipulating filesystems
i ncurses-base - basic terminal type definitions
i ncurses-bin - terminal-related programs and man pages
i perl-base - minimal Perl system
i python-minimal - minimal subset of the Python language (default version)
i sed - The GNU sed stream editor
i tar - GNU version of the tar archiving utility
i util-linux - Miscellaneous system utilities