The flipdisc package provides utilities and a framework for writing flipdisc user apps using Python. The core component is required in order to build the bindings for the particle library, download one of those:
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-virtualenv libffi-dev
It's common to set up a virtual environment for Python:
virtualenv ~/pyenv
source ~/pyenv/bin/activate
Install the flipdisc python package:
pip install numpy flipdisc
Visit the Getting Started Guide for further instruction.