Ubuntu uses grub2 already. I'm sure it's got some
great new features, but for my purposes, it's a bit
less convenient. I often edit my grub.conf one
one partition when I'm booted to another partition
(I use chainloading a lot). If I understand it correctly,
with grub2, you have to run a command after editing
the configuration file to properly create another
configuration file.
You do not have to use the grub2 commands. For grub1 Debian and Ubuntu
had/have update-grub and Fedora has grubby (I think that it is more or
less equivalent but I have never used it).
I keep a copy of grub1's grub.conf/menu.lst and a copy of grub2's
grub.cfg in /root and I edit them by hand and copy them to
/boot/grub(2) after updating them.