Vulkan is a low-level graphics API meant to solve the issues of OpenGL, often relating to performance.
When applications written with Vulkan in mind are well optimized, they often perform better than applications written in OpenGL. Most Windows games are written in Direct3D on the otherhand. DXVK, which is part of Steam's Proton and Wine, converts Direct3D instructions to Vulkan calls and has very little overhead. It performs almost as good as on Windows, whereas converting the Direct3D instructions to OpenGL calls has much more overhead.
Unlike OpenGL where it had two options to get the libraries and possibly cause confusion and extra thought, the Vulkan library is supplied directly from KhronosGroup. Vulkan-Headers-1.3.301 must be installed before Vulkan-Loader-1.3.301. While this is the baseline for what is needed to get Vulkan working, some applications require more software in relation to Vulkan: SPIRV-Headers-1.3.296.0, SPIRV-Tools-1.3.296.0, and Glslang-15.0.0. They are necessary to compile Vulkan shaders into bytecode which Vulkan as an API can process, unlike OpenGL where shader code is written as a string, OpenGL compiles it into a binary, then runs it every frame. Using bytecode for OpenGL is possible, however, and requires extra setup.