I have spent couple of hours about using hotspot on my Debian laptop. The hotspotd method didn't work. So, I tried ap-hotspot after knowing that the hotspot which the GNOME network manager starts is an ad-hoc network which Android cannot identify. So, I began searching for solution for creating Infrastructure network, and eventually found that there was no simple way, like a click and hotspot started.
Also, some googling suggested "iw list" which would expose device's capability, and didn't mention ap in the list. However, I have used ap using Connectify in Windows on the same device. Any help will be appreciated! -- Regards Himanshu Shekhar IIIT-Allahabad IRM2015006