Can anyone tell me how to use packpanda on Linux? The online manual isn't that descriptive and it's geared more towards Windows...
Packpanda is the old deployment tool. There are new tools (packp3d, pdeploy, ...), which replace the old one and are currently supported. They're deeply described in the section III of Panda's manual. Maybe, in the past Panda was more Windows-focused, now that's not true anymore.
I looked at Ogre3D but I know very little in regards to C++ and it looked too intimidating to me right now. So for now, I'll stick with Panda for development on Linux/OS X and XNA for Windows games.
If you want to take game programming seriously, learn to use Bash. It's an excellent prototyping tool. As you learn the shell, you will learn to use tools like make and cvs and a decent text editor like Emacs or vi. There is no IDE in the world that can remotely approach the power and scope of Emacs. If you choose to write your games with C, C++, Java, Python, Adobe Flex, etc., then your options get even more interesting as you then have access to some of the most powerful compilers and debuggers on any platform.
These are time-tested, industrial strength, virtually bug-free tools that have been used to develop some of the most sophisticated software on the planet. Use them. That's what they are there for. You have no idea how fortunate you are to have access to these kinds of tools and the hardware to run them on. 20 years ago, a commercial license for UNIX with all these development tools would have cost thousands and the hardware millions.
One more note: Start with something simple. Don't start with 3D. If the game is fun, nobody cares about the graphics.
