Using pkgs.lib on the spine of module evaluation is problematic
because the pkgs argument depends on the result of module
evaluation. To prevent an infinite recursion, pkgs and some of the
modules are evaluated twice, which is inefficient. Using ‘with lib’
prevents this problem.
Currently very basic gnome-shell launches on my laptop. Quite some
services won't start yet, most notable is gnome-control-center.
GTK3 apps still don't have theming applied and for example launching
chromium results in horrible red windows.
Gnome doesn't work at least since I started using NixOS half a year
ago, let's not give wrong impressions to newcomers. Packaging gnome3
is still something on horizon.