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I am looking for a good guide to build a linux distro from the kernel. What I am looking for is to build a linux distro that is easy on a computer's resources primarily so that I can run a virtual machine while being a practical distro. I am leaning towards using a lighter window manager like LXDE or Blackbox or maybe both.
Welcome to the forums!
Take a look at CRUX or Gentoo for building from source. Otherwise, you can build your own distro from the ground up using Linux From Scratch. You can use whatever window manager you like with any of them.
Have fun with it.
Gentoo would be my choice.
Note however that LXDE is not a WM. It's a light desktop environment, built using pieces from many projects, and some home made ones. The default WM for LXDE is openbox, but you should be able to use any WM you want.
I have heard reports of people using fvwm as the LXDE WM.
The distro of choice is not related to the WM. You can use any WM on any distro. If there's no native package you can always look for community repositories, overlays or compile by hand.