The following is an insightful newsgroup post retrieved from Google groups:

Date: Thu 24 Sep 87 14:45:19-PDT
From: Anonymous
Subject: OS/2 Developer's Kit

[If anybody wants to submit anonymous messages just ship them to me or
whoever is editor requesting anonynimity. -wab]

I've used OS/2 (Version 10.0, Rev 3.42.1.1) for approximately two months on
both an IBM PC-AT model 139 (boosted to 8 MHz, 1 ws; 2.5 Mb ram; 32 Mb,
46 ms, I2L  disk), and an AT clone (8 MHz, 0 ws; 2 Mb ram; 72 Mb, 24 ms,
Toshiba disk.  I've given up on OS/2.  Why?

1.  OS/2 is slooooow.  It is soooo slooooow, you'd swear you were using a
    4.77 MHz PC (without a NEC V20).  For example, OS/2 scrolls text on a MDA
    in real mode at about 2400 baud.  Hey, there's no need to use MORE or
    ^S/^Q; you've got plenty of time to read the text as it goes by!  (When
    the good Dr. Brackenridge saw this, he immediately got sick and left in
    disgust.)  Performance in protected mode isn't much better.  I have yet
    to find an operating system that is slower than OS/2.  MS-DOS, MINIX,
    PC/IX, etc., all run circles around OS/2.

2.  OS/2 is buggy.  I experienced lots of mysterious crashes with lots of
    mysterious messages, i.e., "System detected an internal processing
    error", "Internal thread attempting to leave kernel", etc.  OS/2 would
    even crash (for no reason at all) in the middle of boot.

3.  OS/2 is huge.  The system comes on 8 1.2 Mb floppies, and takes over 7 Mb
    of disk space.  OS2DOS.COM alone is 233,016 bytes.  IBMDOS.COM, the
    DOS 3.3 equivalent, is only 30,159 bytes.  (Interestingly, MS doesn't
    bother to mark the file hidden anymore; I guess it's gotten too big to
    hide...)  Everything else is also bloated.  A comparison of a DOS 3.3
    System Disk and the OS/2 Supplemental Disk is indicative of OS/2's
    "big is beautiful" philosophy:

            Program                            Size (bytes)
                                DOS 3.3                OS/2

        FORMAT.COM                11616                63040
        KEYB.COM                9056                12278
        MODE.COM                15487                47726
        REPLACE.EXE                11775                29072
        SYS.COM                        4766                27602
        XCOPY.EXE                11247                22928

[Does anybody know if Codeview debugging statements were turned on when this
version of OS/2 was generated? How can SYS.COM take 27k??? -wab]

    Hey guys, the more code there is, the longer it takes to load (and
    probably execute)!

    And what do you get for 7 Mb of disk space?  Not much.  Only the bare
    basics, e.g., CD, COMP, COPY, DEL, DIR, EDLIN, MORE, REN, etc., are
    included with OS/2 (MORE still requires a "<").  For comparison, PC/IX,
    IBM's old System III Unix for the PC and AT, also takes about 7 Mb of
    disk space  Then again, PC/IX's 7 Mb include over 200 programs and
    utilities, e.g., awk, diff, lex, mail, spell, SCCS, troff, uucp, yacc,
    and a full screen editor, just to name a few.  

    Also, the "Installation procedure for the MS OS/2 Software Development
    Kit" says,

        "MS OS/2 will run ... with the following hardware:
                ...
                1 meg of memory (2-3 recommended).
                ..."

    Don't believe it.  Don't even think about trying to use OS/2 with less
    than 2 Mb ram.  The C compiler, linker, etc. won't run in less.

4.  OS/2 won't boot with foreign cards installed, such as a 3Com Ethernet
    card, a TI320 DSP card, etc.  This means that you'd better keep your
    screwdrivers at the ready if you plan on using your AT to do REAL work.
    You've got to take the cover off the PC and remove/reinstall boards
    every time you switch between OS/2 and ANY other operating system.

5.  Many of OS/2's "new" features did not work.  At least Microsoft was kind
    enough to warn you of some,

        "...memory swapping to disk is not solid in this release.  If you
        stress it too hard it will fail and the system will stop."

    Hey, I couldn't get swapping to work AT ALL.  Codeview doesn't understand
    the concept of threads, nor can it debug dynamic link libraries.  The list
    goes on and on.  And that's what MS was nice enough to acknowledge---
    LOTS of OS/2 just doesn't work.

6.  OS/2 uses the same pathetic file system found in MS-DOS, e.g., filenames
    are still limited to a short eight letters with an optional three letter
    extension, etc.  Peter Norton (and others) get to sell you a brand new
    set of utilities for OS/2 to make the disk and operating system usable.

Conclusion

OS/2 was a terrible waste of $3000 and 2 months of my time.  On the other
hand, if I was cunning enough to dupe 2000+ people out of $3000 each
(=$6,000,000+), I sure would.  And that's just for the beta version---when
the real OS/2 comes out, you get them to pay you again!  About $395.  But
wait, there's more!  You'll need new OS/2 software too.  The total to make a
programmer's OS/2 system?  Here are some VERY rough numbers:
        
                OS/2                                $ 395
                OS/2 C Compiler                            450
                OS/2 Assembler                          150
                OS/2 Norton Utilities                  100
                OS/2 Epsilon text editor          195
                OS/2 CrossTalk Comm package          195
                                                =====
                                                    ~$1500

Hmmmmm, maybe Interactive, Microport, and others should double the price
of their UNIX systems so they'll be competitive with OS/2.  Then again, they'd
still have more features...

P.S., if you own a non-IBM keyboard destined for OS/2 use, you might want to
      test it to make sure that it handles ctl-esc and alt-esc, the key
      combinations used to bring up the session manager and switch between
      screen groups.  Alt-esc doesn't work on many AT-clone keyboards!

P.P.S., if Billy could get 2000+ people to contribute $30 each (=$60,000+),
        INFO-IBMPC might last past October!

[It would be much easier with 30 people at $2000 each. -wab]