Minolta x-300 for street photography?

Would the shutter be too loud/noticeable? Would people generally care that i *might* be taking their picture?

It may work well.

There's usually enough ambient sound on the street to mask the sound of the mirror flopping and shutter release. You can always lock up the mirror. This will reduce the sound of the camera taking a photo quite a bit.

I use an old Leica M2 with 35 mm lens. I preset the exposure and use the hyperfocal distance on the lens to assure unobtrusive street photos. At f/16 that gives me a depth of field of from 1 meter to 10 meters. My strategy is to hold the camera to my side and take photos at about 60 degrees to the side. The sound of a Leica shutter is so quiet I can only tell that the shutter released is by feeling it through my hand.

Night photography use open x shutter on tripod use fast film

I have been following your questions and I really think that you should settle on a Pentax K1000 from KEH or other reliable camera shop and just start shooting instead of conducting all these surveys of other cheap cameras! You are over-thinking what you need to buy!

At any rate, the Minolta X-300 is not something that'd recommend your buying as a student camera as these are not very well made and are not as reliable as a K1000 which is camera that you've also asked about but I don't think you've selected a best answer for yet.

To your point, the X-300 would be just as fine as any other manual focus 35mm SLR for street photography. I'm not sure why you think it would be too loud and noticeable. This is a compact SLR so it's nearly as small as one as you an buy and it's also very quiet because it has an electronic shutter. The noise comes mostly from winding and the mirror slap you'd get from any 35mm SLR.

Classic street cameras are medium format TLR's like Rolleiflex (expensive) or Yashica (cheap) and 35mm rangefinder cameras like Leica (expensive) and Canonets (cheap). TLR's allow you to maintain eye contact with subjects and have quiet leaf shutters and no ratcheting film advance noise, particularly the knob wind models. Rangefinders are quiet and small compared to SLR's because they have no reflex mirrors, some models will still have a ratcheting film advance noise.

"would people generally care that i *might* be taking their picture?"

That is totally dependent on the situation. In New York City, I can walk up and down crowded streets with a giant Nikon F2 stuck in peoples' faces taking their photos and they don't generally care. Yet in Baltimore City in a more sparse crowd, I lift ANY camera to my face and everyone turns to look. But that's just me. There's much time, thought and philosophy put into how to become an "invisible photographer" and the camera you choose is only a fraction of a nuanced and subjective equation. You won't magically disappear just because you are holding a black Leica or Rollei, but that would probably help!

Please, choose a camera and begin shooting! You can't learn as much from sitting on the computer as you can getting out there and burning film!

METAL AND MANUAL
FILM FOREVER

I'd stay away from Minolta. The Pentax K-1000 is all you need. Unlike digital, with film the body has no affect on image quality. All you need is a meter, a shutter speed dial, a way to set the aperture, a film winding lever and a shutter button. THAT'S IT. Anything else is just fluff when it comes to street photography.
Remember 99% of what makes a great picture happens 3" behind the viewfinder.