Avahi advertises the shares made available by netatalk to macs in your home network via bonjour, so that connecting to the file server means just clicking on its icon. This is how to set it up.
This post belongs to a series detailing the services that can be set up on a home server. To view the full series head to the master post
Avahi installation is almost hassle free; first you install the package:
sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon
Then edit your avahi configuration file located at /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service. The file should be empty, so you can
sudo gedit /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service
and then paste in the following XML
After that just restart the daemon:
sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart
Back on your mac you should now see the service advertised in the Finder sidebar, like this:
Share advertised by avahi
[...] avahi [...]