I'm curious about what happened to Data View Web Part in Sharepoint 2010. Can I or should I use XSLT List View to do what I was doing with DVWP in Sharepoint 2007?
I tried to use XSLT List View Web Part, but I found its stylesheet harder to customize to make it suit to my needs. Is there a basic, minimal stylesheet that I can apply to a newly created XSLT List View Web Part object?
The DVWP is very much still alive and kicking in 2010. I've moved quite a lot of DVWPs and XSL snippets from 2007 to 2010 and I've not seen any issues.
It may be a little hard to see where to insert a DVWP in SharePoint Designer 2010 rather than an XLV Web Part. In the ribbon, go to Insert / Data View, and at the bottom of the menu, you'll see "Empty Data View".
The XSLT View Web Part is the baby brother of the DVWP, it's easier to set up and configure, but the limitations are with how customisable it is, which are probably the problems you're coming across.
Laura Rogers has a screencast video here, where she explains the differences between the two.
You can use DataViewWebPart in SharePoint 2010 without any limitations, as far as I know. I often use it from SharePoint Designer 2010.
It is even not obsolete or deprecated, as you can see from it's MSDN reference.
