Simple 2D Animation Software for UNIX-like OSes
BSDanimation asks: "I want to create slide based cartoon-like animations with speech bubbles and simple programmable 2D effects in a widely accepted format like MPEG or AVI. I have considered using Ming to code a Flash animation, but then decided against Flash and would prefer to stay away from such proprietary formats. Blender seems nice, but is too complex and a complete overkill. OpenOffice presentations seem promising, but I am not sure if it is possible to program effects and speech bubbles in it and export such presentations into a format other than Flash. What free UNIX-like OS based open source software is there for such simple 2D animation that would also allow me to distribute my animations commercially without any licensing restrictions?"
http://ktoon.toonka.com/
Moho is a vector-based program from Lost Marble, and runs on Linux as well as Mac and Windows. It can output Flash as well I think, but wasn't restricted to Flash output either.
http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/index.shtml
there have been svg browser plugins for some time; now native svg is included with firefox on ms-windows, and scheduled for inclusion with firefox and mozilla. here are some SVG and SVG animation links for you:
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