Remember the old grub? When you could just go into /boot/grub/menu.lst (on Debianesque OS's) or /boot/grub/grub.conf (on Redhatian OS's) and edit & save the file raw.

Those days are gone the new grub version 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu3 on Ubuntu 10.10 is now fully modularized with configuration files in /etc/grub.d and a defaults file located at /etc/defaults/grub

I am having a problem on boot with my system boot stopping at the kubuntu splash screen and it's not suprising because I have been trying just about every Ubuntu flavour and then removing them. And now despite removing all the dependent apps I know of for kubuntu-desktop I'm left with the kubuntu splash screen and it refusing to start the gdm window manager.

So after a Google that said to disable the quiet and splash kernel command line options so you can see what going on I was left scratching my head as to how on the new GRUB 2.0 style setup.

The answer:
Open /etc/defaults/grub and edit it to remove the options

# use your favourite editor to edit the file
sudo vi /etc/default/grub 

# then you must run update-grub to update the /boot/grub/grub.cfg 
# to update the listed kernel command line options
sudo update-grub

Change this in /etc/defaults grub

# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
# changed by james to disable the above options
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

Incidently this whole thing was caused by removing kubuntu and once I removed the quiet and splash option and rebooted I found the boot process was freezing at "Checking battery state..." which is a generic error but fortunately a Ubuntu forums post had the answer to my problem which was apt-get install kdm http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10365572&postcount=3

So now I'm using Getting Back to a Pure Gnome on Ubuntu to purge all the different desktops and hopefully get back to my (currently) preferred LXDE Desktop.