Left Matrix Division and Numpy Solve

I am trying to convert code that contains the \ operator from Matlab (Octave) to Python. Sample code

B = [2;4]
b = [4;4]
B \ b

This works and produces 1.2 as an answer. Using this web page

http://mathesaurus.sourceforge.net/matlab-numpy.html

I translated that as:

import numpy as np
import numpy.linalg as lin
B = np.array([[2],[4]])
b = np.array([[4],[4]])
print lin.solve(B,b)

This gave me an error:

numpy.linalg.linalg.LinAlgError: Array must be square

How come Matlab \ works with non square matrix for B?

Any solutions for this?