“If you’re having network problems with FreeDOS under VirtualBox, please update your VirtualBox to version 5.1.10, which fixes a compatibility bug from VirtualBox 5.1.8.
If a particular package can’t be installed, my advise is to IGNORE (Not advised). Just ignore, otherwise you’ll end up in reinstalling over and over again.
Without any further configuration, DHCP worked at the first system bootstrap.
That can be a red herring as sometimes (e.g. old buggy QEMU builds) it looks like it works but doesn’t. But here it does work (not just with DHCP), I’ve confirmed that much.
However, this is mTCP only (8086 friendly), which is bundled into a very select group of apps (ftp, telnet, ircjr, htget, sntp, etc.), so it’s not going to support everything.
Other stuff usually requires (DJGPP, 386+) Watt-32, e.g. Links, which just had a new release (2.14).
Guest post by 
The actual history repo is at:
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
I do believe that should be a comment for this story
http://www.osnews.com/story/29513/Unix_history_repository_now_on_Gi…
Yeeeap, you are right, sorry!
Yesterday I installed FreeDOS 1.2-RC2 and choose the option Install Everything.
Which in fact installs de BASE systems and some utilities, yet excludes Networking.
Today I tried SETUP adv (advanced) and choose Install Selected Binaries.
I was prompted with a Slackware-ish menu to choose individual packages from multiple categories.
Without any further configuration, DHCP worked at the first system bootstrap.
https://twitter.com/ml2mst/status/802287307718008835
If a particular package can’t be installed, my advise is to IGNORE (Not advised). Just ignore, otherwise you’ll end up in reinstalling over and over again.
Im running it on VirtualBox 5.1.10 BTW..
Happy FreeDOSsing
Edited 2016-11-25 23:31 UTC
That can be a red herring as sometimes (e.g. old buggy QEMU builds) it looks like it works but doesn’t. But here it does work (not just with DHCP), I’ve confirmed that much.
However, this is mTCP only (8086 friendly), which is bundled into a very select group of apps (ftp, telnet, ircjr, htget, sntp, etc.), so it’s not going to support everything.
Other stuff usually requires (DJGPP, 386+) Watt-32, e.g. Links, which just had a new release (2.14).