I have the same problem with fresh upgrades from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 with Mate 1.8. nm-applet is not appearing at the beginning, it can be called by nm-applet command, but it regularly crashes and should be restarted again.
I have the same problem with fresh upgrades from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 with Mate 1.8. nm-applet is not appearing at the beginning, it can be called by nm-applet command, but it regularly crashes and should be restarted again.