You wrote "DOS", however your description clearly implies that you mean Microsoft's PC-DOS or MS-DOS specifically. Meanwhile, in the world of DOSs it was a step back in many areas. Especially the lack of a proper driver ecosystem ended to be a nail in its coffin. Theoretically BIOS was intended for that, but it was slow. In the end it forced direct hardware access, which meant any piece of hardware needed separately hardcoded support in every software program. At best some applications had their own selectable, internal drivers (that sometimes could be interchangeable if the same library was used). Anything the programmer(s) didn't implement, wouldn't otherwise work.
An example of a much better DOS is Apple's ProDOS. That's right, Apple once made something actually good and useful. Just remove the artificial or legacy limitations, implement drivers for current hardware, introduce multitasking, modern security architecture as well as data integrity protection measures and it would make a really nice and small OS for anyone who isn't a retard and can be bothered to read an instruction manual.
A GUI isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Proper design is the key here. Most people think that the shitty Windoze or Mac ones are the only way to go. Meanwhile a GUI doesn't really need a "wallpaper", icons, transparency or stupid animations. In fact, a GUI doesn't have to be operated by a mouse, as it's actually a very inefficient way to give the computer commands, also very prone to mistakes and errors. Think about something like Spectrwm, Norton Commander-style file managers (ignore the pull-down menus though), Conkeror browser or any program using WordStar's keybindings.