puredyne uses XFCE4 as its default desktop, which makes it lighter to run than using Gnome. It usese Thunar for file browsing but does not, however, have a built-in facility to browse network (smb or Windows) shares.

An application that provides a GUI-based facility to browse and mount network shares is Gigolo. To install it:

sudo apt-get install gigolo
sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse

You may also need to install gvfs-backends:

sudo apt-get install gvfs-backends

You may also need to edit /etc/hosts to include an entry for the server you wish to connect to, such as:

192.168.1.77     myserver

To browse network places, go to Applications > System > Remote Filesystems

then under "View" enable "Side Panel" to view available network places.