Usually the slowness comes from the graphic driver, not the X server. Many netbooks use an intel graphic chipset with closed specs, and therefore run under linux using the very slow VESA driver. This is definitely the makers (particularly Intel) fault, not Linux.
Actually Intel is one of the best manufacturers about releasing documentation. Nvidia is one of the worst. ATI/AMD is pretty good.
Suspend/resume is problematic because the device manufacturers don't implement ACPI to the spec, the implement it to whatever works with Windows. Try OpenBSD sometime. Their have an independent implementation of AML that might work where others do not.
Almost all modern video drivers provide 2D acceleration (including Intel's X.org driver). From firsthand experience, I can attest that running unaccelerated X is painfully slow.
