What does a Linux machine do better than a Mac, if price were not a factor?

Your typical Linux stack is far more configurable and customizable than the Mac stack.

You typically have far more configuration levers, as well as deeper customization access. The stack is built entirely from open, accessible source, so you can ultimately customize every single part of it to your exact liking.

For example, KDE has an order of magnitude more levers than the OS X DE.

You realize OSX is BSD, right? Just because they didn't build you a configuration button for everything doesn't mean it's not configurable.

Uhm, no. Somewhere at the core it's BSD, but can I patch and recompile the DE?

Not only is most of OS X closed source, it's also not particularly configurable.

What, specifically, are you trying to configure that you can't?

It really is BSD, although the window manager isn't open source a lot of the rest is.

Support machines older than 6 years. Got a ThinkPad from 2008 that's still kicking, rocking the latest Fedora release.

That's not really a feature, if cost isn't an issue you can run OSX on a new Mac.

I get it if you're trying to avoid the cost of an operating system, but that wasn't what you said or what I asked..