A distributed leader-following consensus control framework is proposed for a linear system. The linear system is first transformed into a regular form. Then a linear sliding mode is designed to provide high robustness, and the corresponding consensus protocol is proposed in a fully distributed fashion. When matched disturbances are present, it can be demonstrated that the system states reach the sliding mode in finite time and consensus can be achieved asymptotically using Lyapunov theory and the invariant set theorem. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm