Yeah, that bootsplash looks kind of nice. It might force the ArcadeVGA to display 31khz by programming it's registers directly, though (like AdvanceCD).
I use Gentoo Linux, with AdvanceMAME installed via the "emerge" process. AdvanceMAME installed X without asking when I "emerged" it, but it doesn't actually seem to use to to display. It seems to be using SVGAlib. To be honest, I found it a pretty trouble-free process to get it running. I would recommend SVGAlib, but without knowing the details of your distro / setup and the problems you're having, I'm not sure what to suggest!