File sharing between Mavericks and non-Macs
Thought I threw my two cents in.

Being both a Mac and Linux user - I find that once a SAMBA share is created on a Linux machine (browseable option on Linux samba turned on with or without a login - you can "connect as" from the Mac to the Linux machine), my Mac would pick it up and list in on Finder's left pane. Here's a quick SAMBA setup for the Linux machine.

Its pretty simple to setup a public share folder (or even a private one) on the Mac. Here's one guide