I was watching a video interview with Theo de Raadt (the OpenBSD founder) and the question comes up, as it tends to do in these kinds of interviews, about what desktop environment that Theo uses. He declined to answer.
Tom (interviewer): What's your favorite GUI and what Window Manager?
Theo de Raadt: I don't want to talk about that because that's a personal choice. And whatever software I run like that...
Tom: ...is your personal choice
Theo: Yeah, but whatever piece of software I'm running is probably a piece of garbage, and so it becomes an attack surface.
-- Tom Interviews Theo de Raadt (YouTube link)
I don't mind that Theo declined to answer1, and he's right. He's a prominent member of the OpenBSD community and a prominent figure in computing, so knowing what software he might be running on his computer could be an attack vector for someone sufficiently motivated. More interesting to me is why someone would ask that question in the first place. I find questions about what software that someone uses to be nothing more than trivia that's at best mildly interesting, like what their favorite color is or their favorite band or whatever. But there's sometimes more to this question and questions like it than I realized.
In a former life, my job involved me making house calls to fix computer problems2. On one call I was working the customer asked me what antivirus program I used on my computer. That question took me a few moments to answer. Should I try to sell her a copy of the Antivirus software that we offered (even though I knew from experience that it didn't work very well (and, no, I'm not naming names))? Or should I tell her that I use a free product? I was still using Windows full-time at the time, so I did have more of a need for A/V software. I eventually blurted out that I used Microsoft Security Essentials because it was free and it did a 'good enough' job. I cost the company a sale, but I also built a little bit of trust with the customer, so it was a wash (I'm sure the owners of the company might disagree, since the company is now out of business).
When I told the customer my answer, the response was something along the lines of, "That's how I know I'll get the best product, I ask an expert what they use and then get the same thing". I didn't put it together until years later when I watched that Theo de Raadt interview, but when the customer asked me what I used, what they were really asking was: what should they use?
And that makes some sense, I suppose. If you're interested in doing something you might seek out someone who knows more about that thing than you do and ask them to teach you. Even if you don't want them to teach you, it's also reasonable to ask where you should start. But what that ignores is that, for a lot of cases, there is no and can be no 'best'. A lot of it depends on use case.
Over the summer I had someone mow my grass for me. He had a very nice professional lawn-mowing tractor, and, after talking for a bit, he suggested that I should get something like that because it makes the job so much easier. When I asked how much it was, the reply was that it was around $8,000 used.
$8,000 is probably a good price for a tractor like that. And if I was mowing lawns all day every day, it might be a good investment. But that doesn't take into account my use case. A used $500 lawn tractor is more appropriate for my use case. In this instance, knowing what the professional what he used was completely useless information. It turns out that professionals sometimes have different requirements than us plebes, and professional-grad anything can be expensive, but it goes even deeper than that.
In computers, and especially in computer software, and especially in the Free Software™ circles, there are about as many ways to do things as there are people using computers. I can name 20 text editors off the top of my head without really trying, for example3, and for someone just dipping their toes into the computing world outside of Microsoft and Apple, it can be a hugely daunting experience without any real guideposts on how to even get started. And seeking out recommendations from people already in the field can give the novice a place to start.
All that circles back to the original question. If someone asks me what operating system or desktop environment or music player or text editor or shell or web browser or file manager or any of a hundred things that I use, what's the correct answer? Should I tell them what my choice is without reservation? Should I decline to answer? Should I couch my answer and say that my choice shouldn't be confused with a recommendation? Should I counter by trying to figure out if the asker is just interested in trivia or is looking for direction? If the asker is looking for direction, should I try to provide it? And to be qualified to be able to provide a worthwhile recommendation, that means that I need to get familiar enough with a variety of programs such that I can provide an appropriate recommendation.
Or I can just have a blanket policy of not recommending anything to anyone, but that's less fun.