LEAF Project

The LEAF - Linux Embedded Appliance Framework (Linux Embedded Appliance Framework) is a collection of Linux distributions that began as a fork from the Linux Router Project (LRP) "linux-on-a-floppy" distribution. Most users of these distributions are primarily interested in router and firewall functions, particularly as combined with the convenience of major features of general Linux distributions such as shells, packet filtering, SSH servers, DNS services, file servers, webmin and the like. LEAF is a common choice when commercial NAT routers are insufficiently flexible or secure, or are unattractively nonconformant to open source philosophy.

LEAF is capable of running a powerful NAT firewall with several ancillary services on computer hardware generally considered obsolete, such as 486 workstations with no hard disk.

LEAF is intended to work well with read-only storage media, such as write-protected floppy drives or optical discs. Distribution sizes range from a single floppy disk to several hundred megabytes.

LEAF distributions typically include software designed to be economical in executable size, such as shorewall, uClibc, dropbear and busybox.