Given the options at the time, windows 3.10 (not even 3.11), NT (expensive), solaris (even more expensive), VMS (What, am I made of money?), linux (you HAD to compile your own kernel and use insmod manually), OS/2 was a great way to get 32 bit computing. It was cheap. You could run multiple DOS instances with different memory configurations.
It was marketed horribly, windows 3.11 was 'good enough' and windows 95 made it irrelevant for the common user.