Slowly bringing up my new computer dual boot

I've been slowly setting up my new computer.  It's a nice machine.  Windows 7 gives it a 7.8 user experience rating.  Setting up windows was quite easy.  I have two SSD.  I had intended to load Linux on one drive and Windows on the other.  I tried to do that several times.  I may yet get that to work but for right now I ended up loading both on one drive.  Installing Ubuntu Linux on the same drive with Windows was quite easy as well but I had to use an access point and the ethernet connection.  I'm still having trouble getting the display driver installed and haven't even tried to load the usb WiFi driver.

I tried installing the driver for my GTX970 using the instructions at ask ubuntu.  After rebooting things looked normal until I logged in.  After logging in all I got was a background.  I can move the cursor around using the mouse but that's it.

I tried rebooting Linux in recovery mode but I couldn't roll back my driver changes.  I think I'll have to reinstall Linux and try again.  Unfortunately I don't know Linux well enough to muck with it.

On the good side, Civ 5 plays much better in Windows on the new machine.  I hadn't realized just how marginally playable it was on a machine with a 5.1 user experience rating.

Still, I want to start learning Convolutional Neural Networks using tools like Torch 7 on a machine with enough CUDA cores to not be too painful.