I personally don’t like the usplash displayed at bootup/shutdown in Ubuntu, I rather prefer seeing console messages.
However, the low resolution of the console make the displayed fonts too big which is a little bit ugly.

To enable high resolution console, open a terminal and type :

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer

then comment the line :

blacklist vesafb

Save the modifications and close the text editor.

Now, still in a gnome terminal, type :

sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

At the end of the file, add these two separate lines :

fbcon
vesafb

Close the edited file and type :

sudo update-initramfs -u

Finally, open your menu.lst file :

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

In the kernel line for ubuntu delete ‘splash’ (so you no longer have the usplash displayed) and add vga=791 (to have a 1024*768 resolution)

That’s it ! One last tip, to have more messages displayed you can change ‘quiet’ to ‘services’ or to ‘verbose’ in the kernel line.