I used the Mavrick package from the website (http://www.panda3d.org/download/panda3d-1.7.2/panda3d1.7_1.7.2~maverick_i386.deb) which gave me a warning about not being a “secure” package or something like that, but it let me install it anyway.
I assume everything installed fine since my projects all work the same as before.
I did have to finess the install a bit due to some permissions issues ([url][FIXED] Panda3d only for sudo (Ubuntu repo install)]), and I have to specify my projects to run as Python2.6, but other than that everything appears to be fine.