You don’t - the thirdparty stuff isn’t kept in cvs, I’ve created a 64 bit version of the third party stuff: http://www.thaines.net/content/panda3d/thirdparty.tar.gz
To get the samples just download them from the download page here. Note that for the 64 bit version the directory linux-libs-a in thirdparty should be renamed to linux-libs-x64 - that change was made after I created that .tar.gz file. I imagine that when Josh releases 1.5.1 both directories will exist in the thirdparty directory you get from the download page.
Edit: For the makepanda, its possible to keep something in one place in cvs but have it check out elsewhere, so I guess that is what is happening. Don’t know really - I did wonder as I don’t remember having to move stuff around!