wpa_gui not finding wifi adapter while iwlist does successfully

Solution 1:

wpa_gui works by connecting to an instance of wpa_supplicant for a particular adapter. Let's see if this works -

1. Stop your currently running instance of wpa_supplicant with

$ sudo systemctl stop wpa_supplicant

2. Create a file wpa_supplicant.conf with the following

# /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1

3. Startup wpa_supplicant specifying your interface name and your conf file

$ sudo wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlp58s0

4. Startup wpa_gui as root

$ sudo wpa_gui

And you should see wlp58s0 as the interface. Automating this completely depends on the rest of your networking setup. You could make your own systemd service or modify the default one for wpa_supplicant, you could add some lines to /etc/network/interfaces, or you also achieve this with netplan.