Well, I promised you a complete description of my setup so here we go.
The main con that I faced at work was the hardware performance. Indeed, my machine was so slow that I could not even run firefox and my virtual machine at the same time … Consequently, I designed my environment to be as much as lightweight as possible to be able to run on any configuration.
Operating System: Debian netinst
This thread already showed the eternal debate between Debian and Archlinux ^^ but my ease with this Linux distribution leads my choice. This image comes without GUI (Graphic User Interface) and usual dependencies present in basic UNIX distributions, avoiding unnecessary components which can, potentially, impact on the system performance.
Windows manager: Openbox
Even if most of my tools don’t require a GUI, it is mandatory for some of them. Therefore I chose Openbox, a lightweight and efficient tiny windows manager.
Background image manager: nitrogen
Taskbar: Tint2
Tint2 provides a complete taskbar to manage his windows. Entirely customizable, you will be able to explore your artistic side 
System output: Conky
Conky allows to display different information about your ressources, network traffics, etc.
Network manager: wicd
Two words : lightweight and reliable
They are the principal components of my setup. I didn’t spend too much time in its appearance. This machine is well more practical than esthetic and dedicated to my work. However, I found a theme that I customized and applied to my system. Till now, it ensured the famous wow effect from the clients (easily impressionnable ahah)
https://postimg.org/image/rf6d24ddd/
Finally, to improve my flexibility and my mobility, I installed my system on a USB stick that I mount as a Virtual Machine on virtualbox thanks to the command bellow :
sudo vboxmanage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/VMDK_NAME -rawdisk MOUNT_POINT
Once the vmdk created, start a new Virtual Machine with the image previously generated and you are done !
Obviously, I can directly boot on the USB stick too. It, mainly, depends on the context and my objectives.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Best,
Nitrax