While you'll then have all the hardware and kernel support needed for your LAN to work, it won't do much. The vast majority of Linux applications and services don't exchange information using raw Ethernet packets, or frames. Instead, they use a higher-level protocol called TCP/IP. You've undoubtedly heard of TCP/IP -- it's the suite of protocols that forms the foundation of the Internet in general (hence the name, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).