Last time I did it in around 2020 the reasoning behind every package, and the meaning of most compilation flags was explained. It was a good experience. Yes it works in a VM. A tip is to create regular clones as checkpoints if you fuck something up along the way.

I did LFS on hardware for advanced operating systems in college. After messing up an early step and having to torch it midway and start over, I made the entire LFS build directory into a local git repo. It was not the best use of git and there are better tools, but it did allow me to revert a mistake later and saved me time. So I call it a success.