Jaunty Kubuntu cryptsetup not on live CD

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If you have an encrypted root or other partition you can't use the kubuntu live CD as a recovery disk. Your comparison to a standard application isn't appropriate; this is more like ensuring that live CD supports a file system in case a user happens to be using that file system and require a recovery CD to access the data.

If our live CD wasn't made for installation and exploration I would probably agree. Also, you can still install it.

ok I guess this is an Ubuntu wide thing - there are other bugs #217138 and #404052 for ubuntu-meta. I did not realise that Ubuntu Live CDs are only for installing and exploration and not meant to be used for recovery, the alternative suggested (boot, get wifi/net working, enable Universe, apt update, apt install) is possible but somewhat cumbersome. Gentoo Live CD includes cryptsetup, (as does grml, Sidux, Finnix) so I was just used to having it right there.

Well, my personal view on this is that if you have to recover data than do it with a distribution that is made for this particular use case, *buntu will always be a bad selection for that kind of task. I personally rather have one additional language on the CD than 5 minor tools with very limited use cases (and you really can't deny that data recovery is a very limited use case, not that the majority of people would even be able to do that :))