Thanks to Microsoft's recent release of the MS-DOS 2.0 source code, we can now peek under the hood and confirm that Microsoft specifically intended for the DOS 2.0 file APIs to be compatible with Unix. From XENIX.ASM [1], the code that implements the new API:

    ;
    ; xenix file calls for MSDOS
    ;
    
    TITLE   XENIX - IO system to mimic UNIX

And the CONFIG.DOC [2] file discusses the 'AVAILDEV' option which lets the system mimic Unix even more:

    AVAILDEV = <TRUE or FALSE>
        The  default  is  TRUE which means both /dev/<dev> and
        <dev> will reference the device <dev>.   If  FALSE  is
        selected,  only  /dev/<dev>  refers  to  device <dev>,
        <dev> by itself means a file in the current  directory
        with the same name as one of the devices.

Finally, an example CONFIG.SYS file from the same document:

    A typical configuration file might look like this:
    
    BUFFERS = 10
    FILES = 10
    DEVICE = /bin/network.sys
    BREAK = ON
    SWITCHAR = -
    SHELL = a:/bin/command.com a:/bin -p

I think it's pretty clear how Microsoft intended for MS-DOS to be configured, but alas IBM had other ideas...

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/...

[2] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v2.0/bin/CON...