Yes. The DAG in a context in darcs or pijul (so, I have a checkout; how did those files come into existence) is a consequence of the set of patches; the order is computed, not intrinsically part of every commit. This has many UX consequences; for example, when you darcs pull, you automatically cherry-pick patches in any order (as long as you have the dependencies) -- when you git pull, you pull in a commit in a position in a DAG, and automatically merge its entire history.

If you've heard someone say "never git pull, always git fetch and then either merge or rebase as appropriate", then they've noticed the difference between the two.