[NoGravitas]

I used a 386sx with 4MB of RAM with OS/2 2.1. It was usable for a lot of things. I certainly used word processors, terminal emulators, and casual games in that config. It did swap something terrible if you pushed it beyond its pretty narrow limits, and unlike Windows 3.1, it had enough promise to encourage you to do so. I found it more useful than Windows 3.1 on the same hardware, because it could reliably run a serial modem download in the background while I did word processing.

With 8MB, it was still pretty easy to send it into swap storms, but the range of what I could multitask was greater. Eventually (very late) I replaced it with a 486 with 16MB, and OS/2 absolutely flew on it. Had lots of headroom beyond what I actually used at the time.