I went back and tried to install the official AMD drivers thinking that was the problem.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
unity-control-center : Depends: libcheese-gtk23 (>= 3.4.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libcheese7 (>= 3.0.1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
mine@mine:~/silentarmy$
I am on 14.04 using 5x 280x. I was on 16.04 until I realized that they don't make drivers for the 280x for that version of Ubuntu so I downgraded. Doesn't matter to me which version I am on. This is strictly a mining machine. Thanks for your time.
If you are on 14.04 there is no need to install the official AMD drivers. Just "sudo apt-get install fglrx" as documented in silentarmy's README.md
The fglrx package is the drivers nicely repackaged/redistributed by Ubuntu.
I figured I would start fresh yet again and have done a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04. After it booted up the first command I typed was "sudo apt-get install fglrx" and the system complained about not having libcheese so I installed that and then ran sudo apt-get install fglrx. I then did a reboot and when I open a terminal there are colors/artifacts and I read any windows.