Hi there,
first of all i’m new to this community (coming from blender) and i want to say hello to all of you.
Today i successfully compiled Panda 1.5.4 for my openSuSE 11.1 installation (32 bit) with the default python 2.6 installation.
So, if there is some interest from you side, here is the download link until 11.1 is officially supported. 
http://kidzbox-gmbh.de/downloads/panda3d-1.5.4-1.i586.rpm
Greetings
Linny