…separate samplers are a d3d10-level feature, and any
d3d10-level GPU should be capable of supporting Vulkan
You’d think so, but NVIDIA never supported Vulkan on Fermi (their 2010 to 2012 uarch) or earlier GPUs.
I don’t think it’s worth expending effort to support those though. They require the 390 legacy driver branch, last updated 2 years ago so doesn’t work with current kernels or toolchains.