Coyote Linux is a small distribution of Linux, including the operating system and the necessary services for a firewall/router, intended for easy NAT sharing of an internet connection with a single IP address among many computers on a local network, using spare “commodity” hardware. The project was originally started in 1998 to provide a very simple way of creating a Linux based firewall system for systems with broad-band Internet connections. Initial versions of Coyote Linux had both a Microsoft Windows program and a set of shell scripts for Linux to create the firewall boot-disk.