Newbie: problem solving basic equations



Good day,

I think the "solve" function is broken. I just installed Maxima and 
tried solving a few elementary equations. In all cases but the very, 
very elementary ones, Maxima is no good, it seems. (See below.)


What am I missing? Surely, Maxima can do this?

[lemire@romeo lemire]$ maxima
GCL (GNU Common Lisp)  Version(2.4.0) Wed May  9 12:02:00 CDT 2001
Licensed under GNU Library General Public License
Contains Enhancements by W. Schelter
Maxima 5.6 Wed May 9 12:01:49 CDT 2001 (with enhancements by W. Schelter).
Licensed under the GNU Public License (see file COPYING)
(C1) solve(exp(a*x)= C*exp(b*x),x);

                                            a x
                                    b x   %E
(D1)                            [%E    = -----]
                                            C
(C2) solve(log(a*x)=C*log(b*x),x);

                                          LOG(a x)
(D2)                         [LOG(b x) = --------]
                                             C
(C3) solve(a^x=b^x,x);

                                      x    x
(D3)                               [b  = a ]
(C4) solve(m*x+b=y,x);

                                        y - b
(D4)                              [x = -----]
                                          m
(C5)
-- 
Daniel Lemire, Ph.D.

http://www.ondelette.com/