Is it possible to use US English keyboard layout with dead keys in Mavericks similar to those from Windows and Linux? I read here that "The standard U.S. layout has a few dead key stated under ⌥". Does that mean that pressing Alt+that key would make that key act as a dead one?  

I am looking for a layout that uses as dead keys the symbols that look like accents before the letters that one wants accented, like the "US-International" in Win7 and "English-US, with dead keys" in Ubuntu-Linux. In these layouts, the keys for ` , ' , ^ , " are dead. After them, Space key brings the character as such, while something like e will bring è, é, ê, ë respectively.

Are there such keyboard layouts for Mac? (I am very new to the system.)

(I am not looking for answers like "use this app and create your own layouts".)
The answer to your new question is the US International PC layout provided by Apple.