Wifi disconnecting on Raspbian Stretch Lite?

Question

I've got an old RPi 1 Model B, that I'm trying to use as a Wake-On-LAN server. I've got it connected to Wifi with a DWA-171 USB/WiFi dongle and these drivers (the link contains a script that installs the drivers), but about 60 seconds after booting, it consistently disconnects from the Wifi and won't reconnect.

The problem is, I'm running Stretch Lite, and while I've found questions like this they're made for older Raspbian distros that were based around /etc/network/interfaces.

My understanding is that Jessie and Stretch don't use /etc/network/interfaces, so I'm wondering:

1. Is this a known problem with a known solution?
2. If not, how can I find the reason that the wifi is being disconnected i.e. what
3. What can I do to make the wifi reconnect automatically after it's disconnected? For example, ifup --force wlan0 gives me unknown interface wlan0, so all the cron-scripts I've found to reconnect don't work.

Answer 1

Switching from the Lite to the Graphical edition fixed the issue for me. I'm sure someone with more command-line configuration knowledge could fix it, but apparently something was missing in the Lite version.