On Linux, there are a number of solutions for remote display and sound. The XWindows system is designed that way from the ground up, and most of the sound daemons (pulse audio, esd, arts) can be set to use a remote machine as the target. And if you're on the same LAN, it can work fairly well. But there are so many options, you're best off narrowing your target.
On other platforms or with mixed platforms, you can look at tools like VNC (but I'm not positive if any of the VNC implementations do sound). If your source and target are nearby one another, you're better off getting a KVM with audio capabilities so you can just share a monitor and input/output devices rather than using the network. You're limited in that case by the maximum KVM cable length; in the case of USB, you're talking a few meters, with PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you can do maybe 100 feet. You can find 2-device KVMs for down around $25, up to several hundred dollars for devices which can use wiring like network cables to get hundres of feet away; but in all cases you're hard-wired locally.