There used to be a guy around here who had an incredible fixation on this. I tend to believe him that Microsoft OS/2 2.0 probably did ship to some limited extent through OEMs.
However, MS and IBM were already getting "divorced", and this may have been a token part of the settlement. A year later, MS shipped Windows NT.
Windows NT didn't ship until July 1993, a full three years after Windows 3.0.
The OS/2 interregnum was quite long. All those years Microsoft was still selling their 16-bit OS/2 1.3 because their server software (including SQL Server) ran on that platform.
Apologies for lack of background info leading to confusion.
Microsoft and IBM had a joint development agreement for many years. When they "divorced" in 1992, they both retained rights to DOS 5, Windows 3.0, and OS/2 2.0.
Microsoft had NT, which was a multiuser system, unlike OS/2. Plus it had an OS/2 1.3 layer, specifically so you could migrate SQL Server. So after the divorce, MS obviously didn't promote OS/2, because they had a better thing coming.
OS/2 3.x, portable, for RISC and other CPU families
When MS and IBM split, IBM kept 2.x and Microsoft got 3.x.
It hired Dave Cutler and his team from DEC and gave them OS/2 3.x to complete. It was built on the Intel i860 RISC CPU, codenamed N-Ten. So this version was codenamed OS/2 NT.
Windows 3 was a big hit and Windows 3.1 even bigger, so OS/2 NT was renamed Windows NT.
NT had an OS/2 personality but Cutler's team didn't "complete" OS/2. They built a new OS from scratch, with some inspiration from the work they had done at DEC before coming to MS.
My recollection from interview was ... he didn't like it (OS/2), and built their own OS arch from scratch but with some OS/2 back-compat to fulfill contractual obligations.
Correct, the NT kernel etc has nothing to do with OS/2. But they raided OS/2 for parts: LAN Manager was ported over ("Windows networking"), OS/2 1.3 personality, I think NTFS may have been based on HPFS, etc.
I had a copy of MS OS/2! It was a part of their email gateway product as it ran on OS/2 at the time. I got a NFR copy when my company was a partner I could get MS software for cheap.
I have to admit, that I was surprised when they all came back good! We already had the SDK on 3 1/2" disks, so we could compare the contents. Oddly enough all the executables, libraries and headders are a match but the helpfiles have a different CRC, despite being the same timestamp, and size.
I've installed it on 86box, and then converted the boot disk from 5 1/2" to 3 1/2" inch so I could install it on VMware and my IBM PS/2 model 80. That's another surprise I thought for sure the PS/2 drivers would be missing from the 5 1/4" disk version, but they were there!
On VMware the AT version of the PS/2 mouse driver locks the system up, but I copied the one from 6.123 and it works fine. Although there is no MS-DOS sessions working.
Also as a follow up on my 'dont waste money on a math co-processor' if you have the 'passthrough math' on 86box the dos sessions misbehave big time. Using the softfloat option for more accuate floats results in working MS-DOS. - Turns out OS/2 betas really did rely on a FPU!
You'd be surprised! Cleared my childhood house recently and got a box of floppies. Only 3 out of about a hundred were unreadeable! Had much worse results with my old CDs. Go figure...
